Because the Night: Volume II
by phantomwriter05
Summary: Reboot: An event in one timeline causes peril a new one as a hero comes from a dark future in search of answers from his family's past. While a ghost from the same future with a dark obsession comes to haunt Sarah. All the while forbidden love between the most unlikely lovers brews hatred in the dark corners of a innocent mind. Noir. Jameron, Sarah/Derek.
1. Chapter 1

_**This story will be the encompassing reboot of every story series I ever wrote in TSCC AU that will now be connected together in one universe. Trust me this isn't the same Trials. **_

_**A quick shout out to Girl Scout Sniper who has helped me on this endeavor so far.**_

**December 21, 2008**

It was a cold night, even for this far north, with the frigid winds coming off the murky Hudson. Any good New Yorker could tell you that this cold was unnatural, something that settles deep in your bones. It makes a man uneasy, makes him feel the mortality welling deep inside him. Conjuring a what if, a strange nightmare of what it would be like to be stuck out there without shelter. That was a common man's thought process.

However, the train which barreled through the snowstorm at maximum speed trying to reach Chicago on time was not carrying the common man. The people on the bullet train were so far removed from the other side of life, of the row houses and noisy apartments, that they still thought welfare as more than a word in the dictionary. That luxury bullet of modern ingenuity carried it's passengers away from the glittering skyscrapers which stood like prison towers over the urban jungle, their height illuminated by flashing neon signs and search lights.

"Nice night for a smoke, huh?" The man with soulful eyes and thick designer stubble said as he leaned against the railing of the platform. He was clutching his fur lined leather coat close to him; the patch on the jacket identifying him as security. A wool beanie was pulled just above his frowning brow, and his breath steamed like an over boiling teapot. His unrelenting gaze was focused on the dark twisting trees, frosted in a nightmarish winter wonderland. Long and thick icicles hung off the raised platform, sometimes shattering in the wake of the fast moving transportation.

"Not, really … always gave a bad taste in my mouth." The second occupant of the dark railing answered. Unlike his companion, he was younger, almost passable for a college student, though he wasn't sure if the stubble would fool anyone. For the last couple of days looking at himself in the bathroom mirror, he felt that maybe it appeared as if he was trying too hard.

"Yeah, maybe, but sometimes you got to get that warmth in you, especially on a night like tonight." Hazel green eyes flicked toward the engine room. He chuckled, rubbing his hands against his arms, trying to generate some warmth.

The young man's sharp emerald eyes followed the other's to the engine room. "I know what you mean, and it doesn't help we're going so fast …" He turned back to the security guard with poignant look. The man didn't turn back.

He nodded absently. "I've heard of keeping trains on schedule, but this conductor is ridiculous." He said scratching his stubble.

"Maybe someone should explain it to him."

"Yeah, but he's got some encouragement from some of the boys."

"Really?"

"Yeah, two right by the door … didn't you know?"

"I do now … maybe there's a way you can relieve them."

The guard tilted his head slightly in agreement. "There are other ways of getting to him." He looked up at the roof of the train with a long sigh, the foggy breath trailing around his cheeks and behind his head.

"Give it a thought." The young man gave the older a friendly slap on the arm, moving back to the door.

"How about you?" The guard asked with a glare.

"I'm going back inside and play a hand or two."

"I thought you'd take a trip into the back and check on the _valuables_." He glared.

The young man smiled. "Come on, Derek … that's what we got _machines_ for. It's been a stressful night; I thought I could use a _distraction_." His toothy grin was confident.

He slid the door open; turning back he tapped his ear in acknowledgment, before closing it behind him. With a shuttered sigh, the dapper young man took in the smell of cigars and strange mixtures of perfumes and colognes that smelled too expensive to be worn as heavily as they were. He closed his eyes, letting the pleasing warmth of the shelter fill him from his toes to the feathered lock hanging limply on his forehead. When it was that cold outside you couldn't help but feel it in places you didn't know could get cold.

When he turned back to the window, he was just in time to see combat boots dangling overhead before disappearing.

"_On the roof, proceeding to the control room." _

The boy moved his thumb to his nose and brushed it, covering for the com in his sleeve. "How's that?" he asked moving down the warm train corridor. The mahogany paneling, tight weaved Persian rugs, and stained glass windows were thick and insulating.

"_Bracing" _

John Connor grinned, reaching a reception checkpoint in front of a yellow and orange stained glass window. A young woman with dishwasher blond hair stood in front the polished podium. She wore a single nylon leotard made of black shiny fabric; her cleavage threatening to burst from it. A pair of bunny ears sat slanted on her head and a cotton rabbit tail was glued to her tailbone. She gave a Lolita giggle as an old man, with a thin wisp of silver hair and tub for a stomach, playfully chased after her, swatting at her tail. Eventually he put his cigar back in his mouth and the glass door slid open. The noise of inside the room burst forth; laughter and clinking of glasses, mixed with the intoxicating voice of a seductive jazz number filled the air. There was a twenty second delay before it shut behind the old man.

It was minuscule, but the girl gave a disgusted look behind her, straightening her cleavage, before finding John waiting for her. Her disgust seemed to melt away and she became interested in the youth as he approached.

"How you doin', baby?" she asked in a hard Brooklyn accent. It was as John figured, the girls were of a local flavor, sending in their infiltrator would be easier than he thought.

"Hello …" John tried not to sound too awkward, trying to avoid the hungry lion look, from what he guessed was a hooker … Looking for her own private Richard Gere.

"You here for the party, baby?" She wiggled her eyebrows.

"Something like that." John gave a sly grin as he returned her wiggle.

"You're cute …" She laughed out loud, flipping her hair.

"How cute?" He walked closer.

She rubbed an earring and threw out her hip, the same way she had when he came inside and watched the old man cease his chase. "Cute enough to gate crash …" Suddenly the door opened and the noise echoed through the narrow hallway again.

"_Please …" _

John glared at the grunted voice in his ear. "That's a neat trick, gonna let me in on it." He removed the trench coat which had been wrapped around him tightly, revealing a crisp, navy blue suit and matching tie. The girl bit her lip and walked around the podium toward John, twirling a strand of hair.

She reached for the coat, helping him out of it. "How about I let you in …" She whispered in his ear and found her way into his personal space. "On a neater one." She finished, tightening the tie around his neck.

"I'm sure you know a few …" He said.

"Maybe you'll find out." She reached for the fedora sitting on his head.

"_God … I can smell the crabs from here." _

John caught her opera-gloved wrist. "Maybe another time, sweetheart." He took a step back from her. "A promised a beautiful _girl_ that the hat would stay." He winked, waltzing through the door into the noise.

Once inside he turned into the corner, rubbing his nose. "People are being screened by the hostess; she's giving a signal to someone. They're controlling and maintaining all the doors from some control center." He whispered into the com.

"_Then you better find it, before we make our move." _

"I'll handle it." He returned to the crowded room.

The party room was claustrophobic, and its atmosphere dense.. It was populated, though not entirely crowded; most of the people had found booths to sit in. John noticed that he must be in the VIP area, because there weren't too many people in the room. A bar lit by neon, topped with a futuristic metallic counter and furnished with swivel stools was located on the far end. Off in a corner, there was a small stage, where a young black woman in a red evening gown, sang a smooth set; her back-up singers clothed in blue helping along,. Their brass section was hidden or recorded.

John found a seat at the bar and swiveled from side to side with a squeak. "How are we doing?" He rubbed his noise.

"_Almost there … give me three minutes …" _

"Can you last out there?"

"_Well, my leg hit a nail head. It was aching like a bastard for a couple of minutes." _

"Then what?"

"_I lost feeling in it …" _

The room door slid open and two guards in fur lined leather coats entered; their matching wool ski masks pulled over their faces. As they thumped by, John turned his back to them, pulling his fedora, over his eyes.

"Thank god for small miracles?"

"_There's a maintenance hatch, a couple feet away … I'll be in contact." _

John looked over his shoulder, following the security men. The people in the room turned from their conversations, and the room got quiet. A reprieve from most of the noise, one eye on their glass the other on the men approaching a pool table located in the middle of the party room. The frame was made from black metal, and table itself was Plexiglas, the balls were clear, with frosted numbers of classic design on them.

The guards addressed a man wearing a classic penguin tuxedo covered by a robe-like fur lined coat. The pool stick he held accentuated his small stature; somewhat undersized and stumpy. He had a full head of wiry, coarse, plain, brown hair. Chomping on a half burned through cigar, he looked to be a rich man that was trying too hard to look like a rich man. He was obviously a tortured youth who came into power and wouldn't let anyone forget it. John didn't need to work at Pescadero to figure that one out.

"Well, I don't bleeding care, take care of it!" His cockney accent was unrefined, unpolished, and unflattering to the ear. The more he talked the more John figured he didn't come from the money he now earned.

"Right away, Mr. Smyth. Should we send a protection detail?" He asked.

The small man blew a ring of smoke in the ski masked security guard's face. "Naw, let this little shit weasel come to me … I don't mind getting a little work out before the main course." He had a devilish grin that John didn't like when he turned to a female companion just out of John's vision.

"Yes, sir …" They moved down the corridor to the exit at the other end staring back into the room. There was a pause once they left, before murmured conversations began again.

"There he is …" John whispered into the com.

"_Smyth?" _Derek asked. John noticed, much to his pleasure, the ending to the harsh, snow filled wind through the ear piece.

"Yep, Atherton Smyth himself." John confirmed.

"_Is he as ugly as I remember?" _

"He's not quite the ugly son of a bitch you described from the future. He's still got hair, and there's no bottle monocle, but he still looks like a bridge troll."

"He's got hair? Now that I'd love to see."

John quirked an eyebrow, and tried to imagine the gracious host of this gala even uglier than he was now. It was a hard task and one that might turn his stomach.

Atherton Smyth declared himself a "Business man" and collector; though, from what John had heard, he was more of a hoarder. Above everything else, this new kid on the block was passionate for the fine arts, and by fine arts John understood he meant the fine art of technology. More importantly his name was on the bloody wall.

It would seem through some of John's underground contacts in the hacker community that Atherton had gotten himself, through murder, intimidation, and torture, a new prototype weapon that would make "Bullets a thing of the past". John knew the subtext, and so did everyone else. Plasma rifles wouldn't be created for another fifteen years according to Cameron; this technology had to be destroyed. If he reengineered it, or even sold the weapon, the war would take a turn for the worst after Judgment Day.

Seeing as how this was the only piece of technology of its kind, it made it the most valued piece of tech on Earth, behind Cameron's chip. This meant that grabbing him and pressing his considerable amount of flesh, like Derek wanted, wouldn't suffice this time. Cameron had suggested infiltration, which John agreed with. Each member of the family had their own job to do. They had spent most of their time alone since the beginning. His mother and Derek had to go about their own way. It had just been John and Cameron alone in the house, then later in their Manhattan extended stay.

John had smiled at the way Cameron had stared up at all the skyscrapers. People used to say that there was nothing like New York City during Christmas, and John had to admit they were right. The lights, the atmosphere, it was potent for everyone, even for cyborg protectors it seemed. During a break, John had taken Cameron shopping just to get the feel of the city. When he had woken up the next morning she had decorated their room.

It had taken some time for their closeness to return after the events of his birthday and Riley. It all put a damper on him, made things a little too real. But something about the two of them alone in that city … maybe it was the time of year, or the fact that he hadn't seen anyone in months, but he had found her presence comforting. Sometimes she felt like a part of him, a piece that was missing. That made him feel better to know it was close enough when he needed it.

"Alright, Ladies and Gents … who's the dumb bleeder who wants to take me and m'lass next?" Smyth shouted to the tables, conversations picking up again. "Anyone, looking for a lighter pocketbook, eh?" he turned to the bar, some half looked on.

"Sure … Why not?" John stood up.

The man puffed smoke and took a step forward squinting at the youth. "Well, well, if it ain't fooking Dick Tracy himself …" His laugh was a low wheeze.

"He's a troll."

"_Told you …"_

Smyth puffed on the cigar, suspiciously. "Say something lad?" He asked narrowing his eyes.

"Classy …" He retorted, stalking past the small man toward the billiard sticks on a mahogany rack between two empty booths.

Twisted teeth chomped, down on the smoke. "You stay classy, and I'll just win your goddamn money … that way we both feel like we accomplished something." He laughed again.

John turned his back on him and made an angry face. "Obnoxious little son of a bitch" He muttered, checking pool cues.

"Well look at this one, babe, his balls are probably cold …" He heard an extremely familiar voice with an odd accent harass him.

"Now why's that luv?"

"Cause he ain't got no hair on them, to keep'em warm." The female said aloud to some courteous chuckles. "I bet he ain't got any either?!"

John whirled only to find matching green eyes right in front of him. She wore a red strapless gown that came up to her thighs. Her raven hair was curled and tussled, her lips were plump, old tattoos usually covered up, now on full display. A hand suddenly grabbed his crotch harshly.

John had hoped that after three months that his reunion with his mother could be on better terms. "Enjoying yourself?" John grunted painfully to Sarah through chattering teeth. He felt her press her cheek against his.

"Third storage car, two armed guards, M8's, night vision, squad in reserve, tell Cameron, to seal the fourth compartment, to keep them off us." She whispered quickly. "I'm sorry about this … I didn't hurt you?"

"No, I mean who need's children anyway?" He gasped.

She looked apologetic when she unhanded him, taking a step back. "Yep, he's got some alright?!" She announced in that weird accent that John couldn't place.

"Now luv, it ain't healthy for a young bloke to be getting all hot and bothered when ya' cutting off his blood flow like that. You could give him a stroke." He laughed.

Sarah gave a minx like smile, slinking back to the man, in a not very Sarah Connor like way; placing her hands behind her back coyly. "Getting jealous are we?" She bent down to his eye level, opening her mouth and rotating her jaw playfully. The man put his hands on her backside and pulled her closer.

"Why would I be jealous, when I know what you're after?" He moved to kiss her, but at the last second she moved herself away.

"You're right, and I'm not going to get it, with your hands on my ass, and the kid with a full wallet, am I?" her smile was smoldering.

His low chuckle seemed perverse, removing the cigar out of his mouth. "I'd stop making me fall in love, before I decided to collect you, too." They both laughed at the strange joke. He snapped his teeth at Sarah's nose playfully.

John sneered at the little show. This wasn't the plan, Derek and his mother were supposed to be security guards, infiltrate as mercenaries and work their way up. So why was his mother here, playing this up? He knew Sarah was smart, and maybe too smart for John's comfort. She knew how to play people, especially men. Being a part of the team is accepting a job and not interfering with others in order to complete the mission. But, John just couldn't handle that ugly little toad with his hands all over his mother, even if this was a better way to get information.

"Drink?"

At John's shoulder he found relief. A young girl, barely old enough to be serving alcohol was holding a glass out to the youth. She had dark hair and golden brown eyes, and smooth tanned skin. She wore bunny ears, the same shiny nylon leotard in purple and had a fluffy cotton tail, stockings, and tuxedo cuffs around her wrists. The boy paused at the young woman's attire a moment.

"Wow …" He cleared his throat.

"Drink?" She asked the same deadpanned question.

John smirked. "You read my mind." He took the glass from her and sat on at the edge of the table. "You're a life saver." He said, avoiding his mother and Smyth.

"It's why I'm here." Cameron responded.

He smiled at her affectionately till he found no kick from the coke. He tore his eyes from the drink back to the girl.

"Coke?" He asked in disappointment placing the drink next to him on the edge of the pool table. He pulled his undercover cyborg companion closer to him. He tried to appear as if they were flirting, knowing that personal familiarity could be suspicious.

She frowned, slipping into the role without being told, playing with his tie. "You're not twenty-one yet, it wouldn't be legal." She tightened her cheek.

He couldn't help but laugh. "Neither is stealing plasma rifles from kingpins, Cameron." He pointed out.

"Yes, but drinking is unhealthy."

"And so is being shot at."

"Only if they hit you."

"It's distinct risk."

"Not while I'm here."

He put his arms around her lower waist, placing his chin against her diaphragm, looking up at her. "It's comforting, to know that." He smirked, she tilted her head, a hand threading through his hair at the back of his head.

"Hey, are we going to stop screwing around? Or do you wanna sniff some more waitresses' asses?" John was surprised to find that it was actually Sarah who asked him that question. It seemed genuine as he saw her face contort angrily at the contact. Did she know that their little moment was an act? … did he think it was an act?

"Two against one, ain't good odds, when playing against this one, sonny." Smyth chuckled as Sarah polished her cue. "Better find you a partner, eh … some poor bastard who wants to lose a little spending money." He tapped the embers of his cigar onto the floor.

John turned and lifted Cameron's chin with his finger flirtingly. "How bout it, beautiful? Wanna play?" he asked. Cameron tilted her head.

"I don't understand the rules." She added with a naive innocence. John screwed his face up, they played all the time, and she always won. Cameron frowned at his reaction and motioned her eyes to the table. John felt a little stupid, now that he caught on.

"Oh, well I can show you." His voice sounded a little rushed, trying to compensate for the miscommunication.

Sarah was glaring at the two of them. Now he was sure that wasn't an act, she hadn't seen them in months, and maybe she was seeing how much they'd reconciled since then.

He handed Cameron the pool stick. "I see the balls are racked …" He added for effect, acting as if explaining to his partner how the game worked.

"Aye, and so were yours." Smyth added in, which got a couple of chuckles from onlookers. John rolled his eyes, but for some reason Cameron turned her glare on the man, it was sharp and deadly. The stout kingpin took a step back.

"Watch'ya self-girl … I catch you staring at me like that again, I'll have your eyes out, you little slut." He snapped, an undercurrent of fear twinge his voice. John shifted his jaw at the name calling, but said nothing. Placing a hand on his protector's waist, forgetting for a moment that Cameron most likely wouldn't need the comfort.

Cameron backed off her glare, and turned to John, who handed her his cue. "Alright" He smiled, placing his fedora playfully on her head between her bunny ears. When he did it he caught the ghost of a smile cross her lips, she sensed the minuscule surface of the real John for a second. He realized that he hadn't really needed to give her the hat, but since she had insisted all through their trek through the Upper East Side that he needed a hat for his suit, it had become their little private joke. Sarah seemed to notice that they were out of character, and John could swear that he could hear his mother's teeth grinding.

"So you're going to bend over the table …" John began to explain moving her into position. She subtly moved herself inside his personal space, the sweetness of her curled hair was in his nostrils. She bit her lip playfully. He could tell that she was still flirting, and he was starting to feel uncomfortable with her plan. When she bent down to steady her shot, John followed her, his hands steadying her hips, and his pelvis against her rear.

"Now what?" She said explicitly, making no other illusion about what they were really doing, or not, depending on whom you were. Smyth seemed intrigued at the new girl's cleavage almost spilling from the top of her costume, while Sarah was completely out of character; the dark look she was giving them was blowing her cover.

John took a moment to let the scent of their shared shampoo engulf him as he trailed his nose up her neck in his act or at least it was what he was telling himself. He stopped at her ear, and gave it a nibble, to which she giggled on cue.

"Third storage car, two armed guards, M8's, night vision, squad in reserve in the fourth car." He whispered in her ear. When she giggled in return, her whole body shook.

"Sounds like a plan." She turned back to him with a smile. It was a sign or cue that they were conversing in code, or that's what he thought they were doing. "Now or later." She wiggled her eyebrows at him in a way he had always done, it crushed him a little. For a moment he felt normal, felt that his breath was tickling her ear, and she was giggling because of it.

"Now or later?" John rubbed his nose.

"_I don't know, how far out are we from the drop off?" _

"How much time do you have, beautiful."

Cameron shifted her jaw the way Sarah did when she was in thought, looking up to the sky. John suddenly felt uncomfortable with her so close, when she did that.

"Fifteen minutes." She shrugged.

"Fifteen minutes?" He scratched his stubble.

"_What do you think genius?" _

John took the stick from Cameron and pulled them up, pressing himself against her back, her slender fingers intertwining with his at her stomach.

"Sorry, Smyth, but I think I just found a better game I'd like to try with my partner." He winked, placing his chin on her bare shoulder. Both noticed the strangle hold Sarah had on the billiard stick that John tried not to imagine was his neck.

The man got an uncomfortably snide smirk on his bird like face. "Of course … who am I to interrupt young love …" He shrugged. "But, if you and the rabbit breed little bunnies, make sure to name one after their dear uncle Atherton." His wheezy laugh unsettled John.

"We'll take it under consideration." Cameron replied. John gave him a nod, walking Cameron back the way he came. The boy tucked his companion against him, an arm around her as they made for the stained glass exit. Cameron placed his hat back on his head with a smile that seemed more uneven than the other perfect ones, which meant to John that it was genuine.

"Control room, first." Both said at the same time in a whisper. John and Cameron turned to look at each other. He smirked and she looked mildly pleased at the synch up, the façade of the flirty Cameron all but gone now.

"_John …. John!" _

Cameron snapped her attention to the youth, clearly being able to hear the ear piece audio. John rubbed his nose.

"What?"

"_There's no driver!" _

John looked down at his companion tucked in one of his arms; Cameron looked slightly alarmed at what she heard.

"Say that again?"

"_There is no driver, controls are locked, and the accelerator is going on max … It's a …." _

"Trap." John finished.

He felt Cameron turn stiff when the stain glass door opened and a squad of security guards appeared at the entrance, making a line of fur lined leather coats, snow pants, and jump boots. Cameron placed herself in front of John, her back against his chest.

CLICK

"Might as well, forget my last request and start thinking about yours."

John turned back, the guards stalled their advance at the mask of death on the petite girl's flawless face as she kept an intense watch on the group of mercenaries. Behind the pool table Smyth had Sarah by her hair, a .45 barrel pressed against her temple. She was hissing painfully through clenched teeth as she pushed to hold herself up as she was bent backward.

A woman screamed shrilly from the bar, and all eyes fell on the four of them standing in the middle of the entertainment car. The singing died away, with the brass continuing on, confirming a pre-recorded musical number.

"So what did you think, eh?" his voice got vicious with a gurgling snap to it. "That you could come on board **my** train, and take **my** property, did'ya." He tugged on Sarah's hair harshly. She let out a yell, groaning in pain. John took a step forward.

"Now, don't be hasty, here … just a bit of a _distraction_ that's all."

"_Did you not just hear me? There are no brakes … what's going on?" _

"No need to take hostages."

"_Damn … give me a minute."_

The man sneered. "Hostages? I ain't taking no fooking prisoners, and we're going in order." He dug the gun in Sarah's temple. "And, I'm wasting this bitch first." He snarled, placing his finger on the trigger.

_RATATATATATA_

_CRACK, CRACK, CRACK_

There were gunshots in John's ear piece. Suddenly the train rumbled, people and glasses crashed to the floor, reversing backward in their seats, screams echoed down the halls.

This got Smyth to let go of Sarah's hair. The woman leaned forward, and then smashed her head back, busting the man's nose. With her captor's senses dulled, she twisted his hand till it made a pinching snap, letting his gun fall to the ground amongst his painful scream like a hungry lamb. Rather than staying to get even more beaten on, he took off running before she could get to him.

John turned from where he had fallen to find several of the guards still holding themselves up. He heard their guns cock, and then open fire on the crowds trying to escape. John shielded his head, trying to stay low on the floor. He suddenly felt someone jump on top of him protectively. The sound of nine millimeter blasts wracked the slender body.

From behind the pool table, Sarah picked up Smyth's fallen .45 and fired at a control panel on the wall near the stained glass door. Hissing as it slid across, at a reckless speed, the door slammed and sealed shut. The glass made weird sounds at it surprisingly didn't shatter from the bullets. The stained glass was encased in a layer of plexiglas that was, at the moment, holding off the bullets, but not for long.

"Are you alright?"

John was not as surprised as most normal people should have been at the situation. Cameron was protectively cradling him in her arms , her nylon bunny outfit covered in bullet holes and synthetic blood. His breath was ragged and tense as he looked around at the bodies that surrounded them. John felt someone take his cheek in hand; he whipped back alertly to see that it was Cameron who was staring intensely at him, as if she had just gone through an ordeal all on her own. After a beat she blinked and suddenly looked surprised as he was at the action.

"Yeah …" He panted. "It's why you're here right?" He half chuckled trying to fight that awkward feeling after having a life altering moment with a girl made of metal.

Her smile was no more than a smirk. "Yes …" She agreed softly. "It's why I'm here." She confirmed.

A hand grabbed the back of his jacket roughly and began to drag him like a wounded soldier across the floor to behind an overturned pool table. John didn't even have time to struggle, before he felt slender hands rubbing under his jacket. Sarah had dragged him from Cameron and propped him behind cover, checking him thoroughly for wounds.

"You alright …" he felt her hot scared breath on his neck her frame dipping against him.

John was still trying to get his mind back into it, when he huffed. "If that hand goes below the belt again, I'm going to have a whole new set of issues to talk to Doctor Sherman about." He motioned to her hands still searching fearfully for any silent bleeders.

Sarah glared. "Why do you have to be so sarcastic?" She snapped in residual helpless anger over almost losing him.

"Why can't you, ever just do what you're told? Why does it always have to be your way?!" John snapped back.

"My way's better."

"No, if you would've partnered up with Derek like I said, we would've seen this coming!"

"Then we wouldn't have known were the suitcase was."

"Thus the friendly pool game!"

"That wasn't a guarantee."

"Why do you have to be a spoiled brat about everything?"

"_We've got problems," _Derek's voice snapped him back.

John stuck his head out, peering over the table at the sound of glass giving way. "More than a couple." John agreed.

"_Two guards busted in here, I took them down, but they shot up the controls… The autopilot is busted and the controls are shot._

"Fuuck," John sighed, loosening his tie. Sarah picked up the gun and fired through the brittle glass as a new spray of bullets burst from the sliding door, clinking against the metallic table, shattering the glass top. He took a deep thoughtful sigh, closing his eye, listening to the rhythmic gunfire.

When John's eyes opened, they were hardened, and more determined. "Alright," John said into the com. "This is what we're going to do … you and mom, meet up in the control room, see if you can't get these doors on our side. Cameron and I will go after the plasma rifle and Smyth." He said aloud.

"Really?" Sarah shouted over the gun fire, huddling next to him as automatic fire riddled their cover. "And how do you suppose I get there?" She ejected the clip from the pistol and reached under her skirt, before pulling out a new one.

Both John and Cameron watched her with matching frowns. Sarah inserted the new one with a clank, before she caught the stares. "What?!" She sounded fierce in the heat of battle.

John exchanged a look with Cameron before addressing her question. "I … I don't even want to know where you were storing that." He said cautiously.

Sarah rolled her eyes to the ceiling for a beat, popped up, and returning fire. Meanwhile John peeked over and saw the guards attempt to force their way inside, bottlenecking in the hallway past the decimated glass door. When he got back under cover Cameron was watching him. Was she waiting for him to give her an order? Since when did that ever happen? But there was no time anymore to ponder this new break through.

"Cameron …" He slapped the table. "Toss it." She flicked predatory eyes toward the guards and back to the table, analyzing the plan. She nodded in agreement, getting to her feet in a crouch. John turned back to Sarah, huddling low.

"Make for the booth!" He shouted at her.

"What?" She sounded puzzled, almost annoyed at the cut in. John grabbed the gun from her, when it looked as if he was about to be ignored. "John! What …?" He gripped it with his left hand, his strong arm, wrapped itself around Sarah's waist.

He didn't need to say "Now"; he didn't need to explain what they were going to do. Cameron knew already what the plan was with only two words, all John did was nod. The second he was standing, Cameron had the table in hand lifting it effortlessly. John raced alongside her make shift shield toward the booths, dragging Sarah with him, with a guiding arm. He hurriedly slung Sarah onto a leather bench, jumping on top of her protectively.

With the coast clear, the cyborg flipped the billiard table back to normal and threw it at the men bunched together in the hallway. Like a bowling ball to pins, Cameron rolled a perfect strike, all the men going down in perfect order, not one getting back up.

Suddenly all that could be heard was the eerie sound of wheels on tracks, clicking, like a ticking time bomb that was impossible to be defused. John pushed himself off Sarah, and quickly helped her to a sitting position. He reached a hand up and pushed her soft curls from her face.

"Are you okay?" He asked.

Her hand found his, pressing it against her cheek. "I'm fine." She was caught up in him, he noticed. He wondered what she saw. His five year old self? A grown up? his father? Her eyes hardened again, and she stood up. "Come on … we don't have a lot of time." She announced. John hadn't told her about the runaway train, but he figured, judging by the sound of the wheels, that it didn't sound good.

They collected the weapons, both Sarah and John taking an extra clip with the machine guns. "The control room should be close to the engineer cockpit … where the power cables converge." John said marking his weapon. Sarah was watching him with strangely soft eyes, maternal eyes, it suddenly made him very sad, and he wasn't sure why.

"Maybe I should take Smyth …" She said, nervously.

John smirked confidently. "We've got'em." John pulled back the charging handle. Sarah looked uncomfortable; she rounded on Cameron, who decided to only use one pistol, which John figured it was all she needed. The girl tilted her head at the fierce expression suddenly finding its way toward her.

"Don't you lose him!" She snapped at the cyborg. "Don't you ever leave him … do you understand me?" John had no idea what she was getting at or where the hell this was all suddenly coming from.

"I promise." Cameron said with a puzzled frown.

"Say it again."

"I promise, never to leave him alone." She said without missing a beat, her voice softer and solemn. Sarah nodded and turned to leave, avoiding John's puzzled face.

"Mom?" John called after.

Sarah stopped halfway down the hall, it seemed that it was taking everything she had not to lose it. She turned back to the young man she had raised. Her face softened, and she suddenly looked younger than John had ever seen her. He wanted to ask what she was going on about, what her problem was. But for some reason he just couldn't bring himself to ask.

He opened his mouth, then balked, he opened it again, but he couldn't find what he wanted to say. It was a strange feeling in the air; a strange feeling inside his gut that told him that if he was going to say something to her it should be now.

"You look beautiful."

He saw his mother's cheeks blush slightly, and she gave him a toothy grin. "Shut up." She chuckled shyly, they paused, taking each other in, before she nodded and walked away.

John watched her go and got a bad feeling about what was to come.

* * *

The luxury cars of the bullet train were bright, warm, paneled with mahogany, and plush carpets from Persia. The storage cars that brought up the rear were a far cry from the comfort ahead of them. Cold, metallic and loud, combined with the weather, they felt like large freezers. The presence of frozen Mother Nature brought a new sense of cold. That smell of damp snow and dripping ice, making you feel cold before you even got there. A door slid open, on its own and two figures entered from the warm passenger cars.

Cameron was on point; a leather fur lined coat dominated her frame, draped over her snuggly. She held a .45 pistol easily in her hand, an extension of her arm. John brought up the rear, wearing his overcoat, the collar popped up in the back, his hat pulled low over his eyes. His M8 was in a ready position against his shoulder, barrel pointed at the ground.

"Cameron …" John whispered, he knew that he would have to shout to anyone else, but Cameron could blow away a mouse inside a wall just from its squeak. The girl stopped and turned slightly to face him. John motioned her with two fingers to the other side of the luggage racks that split the car into two narrow walkways.

She was hesitant for a moment, tightening her cheek in thought. Finally she relented when he motioned her where he wanted her again. She strutted down to the other side and in tandem cleared both sides of the car, passing crates of frozen food, and alcohol for the party. The two of them met at the next door that slid open the minute they got close.

"Automatic sensors?" Cameron asked, converging with John, both glancing into the next car. This one held luggage, big suitcases, and metallic portable safes in Plexiglas cases for extra safety.

Green eyes studied the doors for a moment. "Not likely." His voice was cautious, moving into the room first this time. Both broke off and crossed, going down opposite walkways. Like before, they found nothing waiting for them. They both met up at the next door, which opened again for them.

"Something's not right." John studied the way they came.

The cyborg nodded. "This is too easy." She agreed, glancing into the next room. She glared when she saw a plexiglas container opened, and the chrome storage case empty in the middle of a bare metal shelf. "John …" She said stepping forward boldly into the room seeing the plasma rifle missing.

SHIFF!

The doors slammed behind Cameron, separating her from John. Both Cameron and John pulled on the sealed door.

"Cameron!" His voice was muffled by the metal and thick glass of the door. The cyborg watched him slam a fist at the thick porthole of glass.

"Stand back!" She called, rearing back to hit the door.

THEUW!

A super-heated bolt of light, scorched the spot next to her. Cameron spun out of the way, finding a plexiglas crate with an empty safe inside it. Behind cover, she found Atherton Smyth, laughing manically. He felt taller, more powerful than he had ever felt before with the weapon in his hand, he felt like a god. Though god couldn't be shot, which was why he yelped as the cyborg opened fire at him. He cursed loudly, finding a place to hide.

RATATATA!

Cameron turned her head to the sound of machine guns behind her. She saw the sparks of, nine millimeter rounds off the metal just under the glass. Her first and most basic instinct was to go help John, who was in trouble. The girl stood without thinking, to charge at the door.

THEUW!

A bolt of light grazed her heavy coat sleeve, she ducked again, using her hand to put out the glowing embers of the gashed leather.

"MEHEHEH! What's the matter, Juliet? Forgot Romeo did'ya?!" A voice taunted her. Cameron opened fire where the voice originated from. She heard him wail in alarm, she was down to three rounds. She searched her database for early plasma rifle models, and each group she found confirmed at least thirty shots per clip.

SHIEFF!

Suddenly the doors opened again with a loud bang, she looked back to find the way clear, it would seem that Sarah and Derek had taken control of the train. She stood up, only to come barrel to barrel with Smyth, a new Cuban chomped between his teeth, the glow at the tip of the cigar shadowing half his face.

"What'll it be, Lass?" He asked; his aim dead to rights between Cameron's eyes. "Will it be me, or Romeo?" His voice betrayed a sense of madness, like a driver's last few seconds in a game of chicken with a freight train.

RATATATA!

Her decision was made in a millisecond.

The girl didn't flinch, didn't blink, didn't breath, she was a statue carved from death. But she took a step back from him. "Go!" Her voice was deadpanned and colder than anything you could find outside. Her expression was a silent promise that this was only a momentary truce, that no one put John in danger and got away … this was not over.

Atherton Smyth just smiled, a smarmy, greasy smile, blowing a smoke ring at Cameron. "Nice doin' business with'ya luv." The small stump of a man backed away slowly, till he was out of sight.

With the man gone, Cameron sprinted out of the room and back where she had been separated from John. She saw three guards dead on the floor, bullet holes riddled through them, blood coagulating into one large pool of death. John's gun lay on the floor next to two empty clips. She heard grunting and gargling, heavy thumping. The cyborg stalked quickly toward it.

On the floor, John had his hands around a thick neck of a large mercenary with long blond hair falling out of his mostly pulled off ski mask. He cursed his young opponent in German, his big hands pressing on John's face, trying to push him off. They struggled, till the soldier of fortune flipped John over, getting on top of him, drawing a combat knife. John blocked the stab, throwing his forearm into opponent's striking arm, stopping his motion.

There was no wasted motion when Cameron stormed forward and grabbed the man off John and lifted him in the air as if he was as light as a pillow. All it took was a flick of a wrist, his neck snapped like a brittle pencil on a busy school day. She threw him aside, his face slamming against the wall, sliding limply to the floor unmoving.

John raised his hand thinking to be offered help up, but instead Cameron took hold of his stitched trench coat by the front and hauled him to his feet. She held onto him for a long moment examining him thoroughly, almost worriedly.

"You know I had him where I wanted him." He panted looking down at the mess he had made, trying not to think about the lives he ended this night.

The softest of smiles graced her lips. "I know …" She looked on with him. Her hands still clenched to the front of his coat possessively.

The two of them hadn't learned the ups and downs of the world they were living in with each other. They didn't know how to navigate buried feelings and complicated knowledge of forever in the other's company. But tonight the two of them found out that this partnership was a good start to figure out the rest.

"Smyth?"

"Gone"

"The rifle?"

"Gone as well."

"… My hat?"

"There's a nine millimeter hole in it …"

"I'll be damned."

* * *

Being in the warm corridors of the luxury cars again was only a momentary bliss. The two teens rushed through the narrow spaces toward the front of the train. They followed the trail of destruction left in Sarah Connor and Derek Reese's wake. Bodies of unsuspecting guards littered the way, like a path of violence to the control room.

"_John, John you need to get over here, right now!" _

"Thirty seconds!" He replied into his sleeve. He hadn't been too mad at Cameron, sure the rifle got away, but he wasn't sure he could blame her for choosing him over the mission. He had done the same on his birthday. Her life or the mission, he chose her the minute he saw her lying in that old junker, ready to be burned. She had now done the same for him … there would be a lot to sort out once they got back home, wouldn't there?

He had complete tunnel vision for the rest of the trip, spurred on by the fact that the train was starting to tip at an angle. He was starting to get worried, because all he could do was think of that last look his mom gave him before she disappeared. That weird sense of … he couldn't even think about the word, suffice to say that it seemed like it was for the last time.

The control room was right were John thought it would be. Three men lay propped against a steel door, barred from the outside; a security measure John didn't understand when he saw it. Inside, through glass panes he saw his mother and uncle struggling to force the door open.

"What happened?" John shouted.

Derek pointed to his ear, nudging Sarah to get her attention. She looked up and found John's eyes, the look she had for him, made his insides drop and twist. It was a look of fear mixed with a strange acceptance of an inevitable John couldn't as the train tilted farther.

"Hey!" John tried to force the bars apart, but he would have better luck, pulling iron hinges off an old stove. Derek pointed to his ear again, this time John understood what he was saying.

"What happened?" He said into the sleeve.

"_The minute Cameron let that piece of shit go, he hit a switch on a remote and shut us in here." _Derek grunted trying to pry open the door.

"_We're sealed in, John!" _Sarah leaned into Derek talking into his ear.

Quickly the teen turned to Cameron who was observing the barred control room, her eyes searching thoroughly.

"Can you get them out?" John asked desperately, feeling the train begin to shake and scenery start to fade into black outside. Cameron said nothing. She just stared at him, and opened her mouth.

"No!" John interrupted her. He looked around with panic at everything around the door. "There has to be a safe switch somewhere out here!" John began looking around.

"It's a dead switch John … controlled from the outside." Cameron said, watching him, as the lights flickered, the tremors began becoming more violent. Inside Derek and Sarah both looked up and then back at John who began tearing at the walls, looking for electrical wires.

"John, we have to go." Cameron said gently.

The youth turned to her as if she had just stabbed him in the spleen. "Are you nuts? They're trapped in there!" He yelled. "We got to save them!" he shouted, turning back, pulling the wires out frantically.

Cameron stepped forward. "The Train is falling off the track. It will crash very soon, We have to leave." Her voice was monotone; challenging John's panicked last-ditch efforts. John Connor ignored the cyborg, connecting wires together, but it didn't do anything but blow out light bulbs over head from power surges.

"_John Connor!" _

The voice snapped him to attention, through the glass he found Sarah staring at him, her face stern and strong, like all of his memories of her. She punched the glass hard. _"You get off this train, right now!" _She ordered.

"No … not without you and Derek!" he shook his head, avoiding their gaze. "It's just the right wire combination, is all!" His voice was rushed, the copper electrical cracking and snapping as he conducted and sparked them together.

"_John, you've got to go." _This time it was Derek, his voice was eerily calm and his gaze steady and piercing through the glass. Derek Reese was a soldier, he had fought and killed, and learned long ago how to die.

Tears began to well in his eyes. "You don't understand …" John's voice was horse. "I've got to save you …!" He said pulling at the bars with all his strength. Derek got a rueful painfully Derek Reese smile. The same smile he had in the park when John saw his father for the first time, the same smile he had in the park as a twelve year old playing with his little brother.

"_Don't worry about that, kid, you did something better for me."_

CRACK, CRACK, CRACK

Gunshots rang out, startling John. Cameron fired the last of her clip into the window, weakening the structure, before her fist burst through the rest. A deep cold rushed through the hallway, but John didn't seem to notice … he was numbed already.

"Mom!" John wasn't sure if anyone could hear it. But Sarah put her hand on the glass, a tear ran down her cheek. But she didn't say anything, her eyes were on him, but her mind was somewhere else. With a boy who slept with his hand under her chin, who crawled into bed with her when he was lonely or scared, and a simple hug made it go away, chubby cheeks, pirate smile, and big loving green eyes.

"_Go!" _She fought a sob off, he voice half stern, half pained.

Before he could say anything more to fight them on their decision, he felt two wool lined heavy security coats folding over him and a slender arm wrap around his throat. It began pulling him away from the door.

"No!" John screamed after the two people now visibly clutching the other's hand behind a frosting glass window. He felt petite hands grip him with the strength of a trash compactor claw and fling him out a dark hole. His vision was darkened to total black, though his eyes were open. He felt as if he was floating in the below-zero air for what seemed like forever before he landed face first in a hard compacted powder, painfully cold to the touch. He grunted and yelled as he slid in the momentum, snow caked in his mouth.

He struggled to his feet, his body sore and buckled, spitting up red tinted snow. The iced wind swirled through his soft spiked locks. His head felt numbed, but he chased after the only light he could see, small rectangular shaped window, passing by, carried by an unseen metal body in the dark. John wanted to scream for his mother and uncle, but the cold welled so deep inside him, that all he could do was make a strangled cry.

SCHRREEECHCCHH!

An awful noise that curdled John's blood rose high above the sound of the violent wind. He ran as fast as he could after the train as the lights flickered out and all he could see was the sparks of metal rubbing together as the bullet train rolled off the track, car by car falling away into a dark abyss below.

Suddenly something tackled John to the floor. He kicked, screamed, and punched, to get away from the person that restrained him from following the train over the edge . The teen fought and fought till there was nothing left to show that the train was there, till there was nothing left to show a boy was ever there.

For a moment the moon broke free from the thick clouds of the cold night, framing the scene like a spotlight on anguish's stage. In Cameron's warm embrace, John fell to his knees, his hands behind his head and gave one last pained scream in the sight of the dying moonlight.


	2. Chapter 2

**July 26****th****, 2008**

The heat of the desert swept through a darkened and musty abandoned house.

Sweat stung the eyes of a pretty nurse in her early thirties.

Michelle Dixon blinked away fearful tears as she whimpered out sputtering breaths, watching a handsome blond whose face was plastered all over the news; a dead man who massacred twenty FBI Tactical Team members.

She was even in the hospital when the body of George Lazlo was taken to the morgue. Amy and Betsy, her best friends and fellow nurses, had snuck down to see it, like they were going to see a freak show at the circus. She called them weirdos, choosing instead to play Rummy with Mrs. Rosenthal, a cancer patient.

Now after being kidnapped and bound to a chair in an abandoned house, in the middle of the desert, she wasn't sure what this man, this psychopath, wanted with her. All she wanted was to be found by her husband, to feel his arms around her. However when she called him all he did was ask her strange questions, offering no comfort, no reassurances.

"Please" Michelle asked in a sob, watching her captor arrange mouse traps in an equal square pattern on the floor next to her. "Why are you doing this?" she asked, watching the blond man attach a wire to one of the traps.

He said nothing as he finished his fitting of the wire.

"Why are you …?" she attempted again, but was cut off by the loud sound of duct tape being unwound.

"No, don't tape my mouth. I won't scream." She pleaded as the man measured off a piece of the grey sticky paper. Her blond captor had no ounce of emotion as he ripped off a piece of tape.

"I swear I won't scream. I won't scream." She begged shaking her head. Her pleas fell on uncaring ears as the man fitted her lips with an evenly measured piece of restraint.

Satisfied with the muffled cries of fear the man went back to work on his traps in silence. After several beats he spoke to Michelle as if he was explaining his plans to his prisoner.

"In 1897, James Atkinson invented the mousetrap." He explained to the woman he had tied to the chair who looked at him with wide eyes, as if he had lost his mind. Without looking up he continued, "The spring slammed shut in 38 thousandths of a second." Pulling the metal spring back, he turned to face Michelle placing his hands on the chair.

"It's a record that's never been beaten." With no effort he lifted her chair, which received a panicked muffle from Mrs. Dixon as he carefully placed her on his work. A small click sounded as if something was put in place.

"It's hard to build a better one." He said emotionlessly tightening a wire.

"I'm sure your master will wish the same about you." A very deep voice spoke with a gravely mechanical echo to it.

Michelle and Cromartie turned to a shadow standing in the door way. The figure was huge, seven feet tall, his chest and shoulders were covered in enormous muscles that jutted through the black tanktop he wore. His thin waist gave his large powerful legs an artificial look.

Michelle let out a frightened muffled scream at the expressionless chromed-metal opera mask the large monster-of-a-man wore over his face. Through eye slits in the metal covering blood shot and crazed eyes looked at Cromartie evenly.

"It's pathetic really." The masked figure nodded at Michelle's captor before he stalked toward the machine.

* * *

A dusty cloud of sand trailed an old, beat-up Jeep that rushed down a heated desert highway toward an abandoned house. Sarah didn't like this, she didn't like going in blind, without intel, or even the semblance of a plan. She sighed from the passenger seat and ran her hand through her mane of long, raven locks and looked out the side window. She watched the dunes pass by like yellow blurs. From the side mirror she spotted Charlie; he was a nervous wreck, sweating and shifting uncomfortably in the back seat. He looked exactly the way she felt inside.

"_This is a trap to get John, why in god's name am I out here?" _

Sarah knew the reason why. It was her desperately clinging to a future that was no longer attainable. It was a future with a white picket fence, and a man who loved her. Where she would give John a home to spend his days in peace, make friends and go to college to learn to be whoever he wanted to be.

That dream died the day Charlie gave her the sparkling ring the John had chosen for him. That night she let him make love to her, but she couldn't help but feel guilty as she felt his lips and hands trace her gorgeous body. She couldn't help but feel like she was forgetting Kyle, like committing her love and life to Charlie in a white gown was somehow turning her back on all her soldier had given her.

With a turn, she glanced at the man behind the wheel. Derek Reese had a focused look; not nervous or distant, simply focused, like an old professional. He bothered her. It wasn't his existence, or the way he pushed her and John, she could handle that. What bothered her was that she didn't feel the same guilt that plagued her and Charlie's relationship when she was with him. Why did she feel so safe with him around? Maybe it was because they shared a bond in Kyle and John, or maybe it was the plan simple fact that she felt safest with a Reese. The two weren't together, hell they couldn't even spend ten minutes in the same room without digging at each other.

There was something that separated the two men in the car with her. Charlie had limits; there were things that he wouldn't do, lines he wouldn't cross for anyone. Derek Reese, on the other hand, he would do anything and everything he needed to do to protect John. He would die for her son and in the back of Sarah's mind, she knew that he would do the same for her.

"_What do you say to that?" _

Her gaze turned to the junior Tech-Com officer's hand that clutched the shift stick. Parts of her wanted to take the calloused hand in hers and intertwine them. Derek turned from the road, and looked at Sarah. She knew she had been caught staring and reached out and grabbed a Glock resting near the stick to cover. She checked the magazine then returned the look. He gave her a reassuring grin and nod. She returned it with a scowl and turned away from him, feeling a calm settle inside her that wasn't there before.

The truck took a sharp turn and slowed to a halt near a ruined foundation of a shack that once belonged to the ramshackle home several yards away. Derek was first out of the car, with his grenade launcher in one hand, and a wood pump tactical shotgun in the other. He walked several paces, observing the area, before he slid the shotgun across the hood, so Sarah could grab it. Without a word he took off to the ruined wall, taking point. Sarah watched him a moment with a nervous clench of her belly.

"Wait, how do we get inside here?" Charlie asked observing the looming building ahead.

"Getting inside isn't the problem." She replied, meeting him in front of the truck with her own observation of her surroundings. Charlie gave her a look that said he wasn't sure what to do next.

After a beat Sarah pulled a pistol from the waist band of her khaki cargo pants. "Try to hit something metal." She handed him the pistol followed by the clip. He took both, glancing at her like she was someone he didn't know. Sarah snatched her shotgun from the hood of the car, and gave Charlie a look that told him that he had now seen the real Sarah. Wordlessly she rushed to catch up with Derek who was sidling the wall.

He stuck his hand out telling her to slow down, she complied, stopping. He took a quick tactical sweep of the open area around the house before continuing forward.

It was at these moments that Sarah questioned if he was taking the team leadership out of pure instinct, or if he was taking point for her protection in case of an ambush. She would rather it be the former, because she absolutely detested the idea of being treated like a fragile princess that needed protecting. There was only one man she would allow to keep her safe and take care of her and he died doing it.

With his back to the wall Derek listened closely to the wooden door of the entrance, sensing no ambush he pulled the door open and rushed inside. Sarah followed closely as his cover as he swept from room-to-room of the rundown building. Both took opposite sides of a doorway, with Derek looking into a large open area that might have been a living room.

"Charlie …?" a scared voice called. Dixon jumped from cover to run to the voice, but was slammed back by Sarah.

"Is someone there?" the voice called again with a sob.

Sarah motioned Derek to check it out. With a sucked in breath he moved into the line of fire and disappeared around a corner.

"Clear!" Derek's voice echoed through the house. Charlie didn't wait for Sarah to clear him; he shoved her pinning arm down and rushed down the corridor. Sarah closed her eyes for a second before following her ex down the hall.

Once inside the large room she came across a turned over chair where a pretty, blond woman sat tied while Derek was busy remedying the situation with a knife. The woman was crying hysterically, bucking to get out. Charlie was kneeling next to her shushing her as he stroked her dirty hair. Sarah walked up to the three observing the scene quietly.

Though it had been eight years to Charlie, it had only been several months since she had been engaged to the man, so when Derek's work was done a small pain stung Sarah's chest when the blond rushed up off the floor and embraced Dixon. Not wanting to see anymore, Sarah took a step back, hearing a snap, and feeling a small pinch to her heel. Looking down she saw that she had stepped on a tossed aside mouse trap.

"What was that?" Derek asked coming next to her. Skillfully Sarah bent her knee and plucked the wooden mouse catcher from its hold on her boot.

"Mousetrap?" she held the object up to her partner with a confused frown. However he was no longer focused on her; there was a look of shock and alarm on his face.

"Sarah …" he said in a concerned voice, taking her arm and turning her to what he was looking at.

A decapitated body hung upside-down, hoisted by a rope, from the aluminum rafters. . From the scene in front of them it appeared as if someone had ripped the head off in a brutal, unclean fashion. Crackling circuits hung from where the head should have been, as synthetic blood leaked from the popping wires.

"He took its head!" Michelle screamed in trauma, sobbing into Charlie's chest. Sarah and Derek both looked at the woman, then each other.

"What the hell is going on?" Derek mused to Sarah who unconsciously took a step closer to him.

* * *

Usually stoic, mocha eyes watched a pretty, blond girl talk with a hoody-clad teenage boy . They held a strained anger as the teens smiled and chit-chatted near a magazine rack. Cameron Baum (Phillips) wondered what John saw in this new girl Riley that she didn't have, and why he chose to spend his time with the blond and not with her. She had once heard Sarah Connor refer to John as a notorious blond monger. She wasn't sure what that meant, but she had noticed that John seemed to set his sights on girls with yellow hair, such as Cheri Weston.

Even then, John always seemed to prefer to spend time with her, than to chase a clearly unviable, lanky and under-developed girl such as Cheri. The thought turned Cameron to her breasts and toned body to which she gave a small ghost of a smile at her endowments, which she learned was an advantage in this vain period of human history. Cameron's lightened expression disappeared when she caught the teens share coy smiles.

There wasn't any blame on John from Cameron's side. She understood that after her glitch there was a tension and uncertainty amongst her adopted family about her status and control. But it was no where near the conflict raging inside her. There was a very human fear that gripped Cameron every time her screen sputtered, every time there was a small black out in her HUD she clenched her teeth and hoped that she wouldn't come back to awareness to find that she had bathed in her best friend's, her purpose in life's, blood.

Cameron wished that John would have never brought her back to fight the demons that now plagued her everyday. She wished that John would have burned her, so that she wouldn't remember the sadness and fear of her core programming taking over her body, where she could only watch as Skynet's phantom hunted John and Sarah like animals. It was only by a burst of will that she could overpower the override the ghost of Skynet cast on her.

Yet, the damage had been done. Skynet had knowledge of her inner most thoughts and had used it against John. If she had had control of her own body she would have begged John in tears, not for mercy, but for death as her dark father's will was ever inside her, trying to force its way out and to take control of its fallen angel, and she was unsure how long she could hold it off.

When she had woken in those first moments, saw John holding a gun to her, and scanned the thermite scattered over her torn body, she knew he had brought her back. The action alone was a silent answer to her private questions about why he looked at her when he thought she wasn't looking, or why he was caressing her face when she came back from destroying the ARTIE system.

He would never admit it to her, but he was in love. That was why he couldn't be trusted anymore. He loved her and as long as he did, he would risk his own safety for her and she couldn't let anything happen to him.

"Dude your sister."

Cameron caught the couple she was glaring at look in her direction with Riley pointing. Cameron locked eyes with John just as a group of people passed in between the three teenagers. When they passed, John and his blond were gone. She stood swiftly from her coffee house table and found no trace of them.

"_Bitch whore."_

* * *

(Desert Suite – Terminator 2 Soundtrack)

In the deep dark of the cold pacific night a half crescent moon waxed and waned. It's halo half visible through the cover of sheer passing clouds, like the wistful dreams of a young child's promise in the new world. Below, on the ground where mortals walk, housed dunes of arid soil that, on the whim of the fickle wind of the desert's will, blew rough, irritating grains of sand across the surface

In the middle of this unforgiving landscape a ramshackle home sat, undisturbed for almost thirty years till the events of the morning and late afternoon. Made of half rotted wood, half aluminum siding, the clash of the heated metal and the dropping temperature gave the old home, and conjoined shack, an odd sound. Coupled with the noise of the wind through the homes many cracks and crevasses formed a nightmarish symphony of odd moaning and snapping that gave the neglected buildings a living pulse. Its odd wailing was that of a neglected old woman, toothless, useless, and begging for God to end her misery.

But it would not be this night … This night the old broad had more life in her than she could stand. For that morning, the broken home was host to an event that was as grizzly as it was mysterious. Its walls stained with the blood of the past and embryonic fluids of a new future. The event was something that didn't escape the notice of a stranger that watched the old home from the shadows of the night.

The seeker of the truth was tall and athletic, with the lithe build of an acrobat. The man looked strong and mysterious in the shadows. The wind tossed about a head of loose raven curls, grown out and parted. In the wan of the moonlight his eyes where cast in a sharp emerald green, a layer of glass seemed to cover them, framed by a sliver of dimmed moonlight.

Sand crunched under the soles of motorcycle boots, muddy brown, covered in age's grime. His hands were stuffed into the pockets of a thigh length leather jacket wrapped around him like a second skin, brown and vintage, the loose buttons and faint sent of a woman's lotion covering gun oil and another man's earthy must made it seem as if it had been passed down to him through the decades of other's use.

The man casually approached the house from the front … a strategy not used by either visitor from earlier in the day. He stopped at the entrance and grunted in disapproval to see it nailed and boarded shut by the early occupants. His face contorted in a frown as he took a step back. For a moment he contemplated kicking the door open, but when he noticed that the nailing was new, but not beaten down with too much dedication, it became clear to the stranger that whoever sealed the front door was going for the appearance of an aged road block. Just in case someone came by and would be deterred enough not to give the effort, and yet not suspicious enough at the newly bolted door to garner interest to look further.

Despite the need to go inside to investigate whatever it was that was sealed inside, the tall shadow knew that it would be best if he didn't disturb the boards for fear of drawing too much attention to himself in the follow up of the original party coming for what they hid inside.

He grunted with a thoughtful rasp and retreated from the porch back into the night, popping the back of his jacket collar up to guard from the cold. Amongst the eerie howling of the home, trying to disperse the man from his mission, an index finger arched under his nose and a thumb pressed under his chin, he observed the structure. When the crescent moons rays were freed as the wisp of clouds sailed away, they seemed to reflect back into the sky by the home's shambled roof.

It took less than a second for the man to know what it was that was causing the reflection. Hardened eyes searched the roof a moment longer, before observing a metallic device attached to the swell of the old roof. It was a rod with four polls facing North, East, South, and West, topped off with a metallic rooster welded in 2D.

Reaching inside his coat, and into a belt buckled at his waist, he retrieved a weapon that appeared to be a firearm, but was too sleek and futuristic to be thought of as anything more than a science fiction movie prop. An oval shape with a point at the end was stuck in the barrel. His aim took a moment to readjust to the squeaking wind director.

PFFF!

With a puff of gas and the hiss of metallic cable trailing, the oval shaped point shot into the sky flying past the metal rooster before arching back. Like a boa constrictor, the cable coiled around the base rod, anchored with a clink by the oval which opened into a grapple once securely coiled. The man spread his legs and took a deep breath before hitting a button where a hammer of a pistol should be.

He made a grunt as the line retracted, taking him into the air with a sharp tug. The grapple cable zipped as he was shot up the side of the house. His feet made a mighty clank on the shaky roof as they secured themselves on aluminum planks. With each step to his destination, the man could feel the metal give way under his weight. With a thumb flick, he flipped a switch and the grapple wire became loose.

Finally, his gentle journey came to an end as he reached what he expected to be there to greet him. The skylight was yellow and brittle from years of abandonment. Bending down, the man set aside his grapple gun and opened the rust rotted metal casing. An explosion of dust made him give a cough. He shook his head at himself and his mistaken cough that impeded his stealth.

Taking up the grapple again, he climbed down into the dark abyss below, letting himself dangle from the line, a hand securing him with the gun. With another flick of his thumb, this time down and holding down the trigger, the line extended. With another zip echoing softly into the abandoned house, the shadow lowered inside, till his feet landed with an ear perking clap on rotted wooden planks.

After disconnecting the wire from the grapple gun the man placed the tool back at his waist and from inside his coat extracted a Mag-light made of chrome. With a click the darkness surrounding the man receded.

Flicking the beam around the room he found the place a mess of old furniture and boarded windows. Flashing by something that caught haunted eyes attention. The man paced to a far table occupied by a toolbox and craftsmen's equipment. The beam settled on a muck of light brown sticky material.

"Modeling Clay" He grunted to himself, bending down to sniff it.

"_I'd like a pepperoni pizza, extra sauce … a medium ham and … pineapple?"_

"_yes …" _

"_Hey, Cameron … get off the phone!" _

"_We'd also like a liter of your best soda." _

"_Sir?" _

"_Just a moment … Cameron I got it, get off the phone!"_

The beam of light quickly flashed down the hall towards the grainy audio of voices carrying through the house. Abandoning the tool and craftsmen sets, feet power walked down the rickety hall and into the far room to the north. It was bare, but for a single table with a suitcase sitting open on top. A bright green light was illuminating the otherwise pitch dark room. The man turned off his flashlight.

"_So … A large Pepperoni, a large Italian sausage, and a medium Ham and Pineapple?" _

"_John inform him, he forgot my soda." _

"_Get off the phone!" _

"_Oh, right the soda … what soda would you like, Ma'am?" _

"_No, don't address her … I'm in charge here! Don't encourage this behavior!" _

"_Sorry, sir … which soda would she like?" _

"…"

"…"

"_hrrr … What soda do you want Cameron?!"_

"_What do they have?" _

"_Ohmygod!" _

The man observed the case with a studying eye, following the green lettering, with an address on the small computer screen. Clicking on his flashlight, he turned it on the wires and followed it to the boarded window.

"I'll be damn." He sighed seeing the frame of a large phone tower in the not so long distance next to the shambled home.

"_So, a large pepperoni, a large Italian Sausage, and a Medium Ham and Pineapple … with a root beer?" _

"_Root beer doesn't have alcohol in it does it?" _

"_No Cameron …"_

"_Oh … good, it would be illegal." _

"_Yes it would, Cameron … yes it would." _

"_Will that conclude your order?" _

"_Yes, that will conclude our order." _

"_No, that'll conclude MY order." _

"_It's my order too, John." _

"_No, I ordered, you made a running commentary!" _

"_I ordered a soda." _

"_No, you told me to order a soda for you!" _

"_Only, because you wouldn't let me." _

"_I told you once, I told you a hundred times, I don't need you to be on the phone with me when we order things!" _

"_You're total is going to be 45.50 and may I suggest some marriage counseling, on dependencies issues."_

"_We don't have dependency issues … we're not married!" _

_Click _

"_Do you think we dependency issues, John?" _

"_Hang up the phone, Cameron." _

The man growled at the argument between them, as if annoyingly familiar with it- a rerun he didn't want to hear the first time, much less thirty thousand times over. Flicking the light around he saw a loose board leaning in the corner of the room. Placing the light down facing the suitcase he took the heavy board and with a grunt pounded the device. There was an explosion of circuit sparks as he beat the gadget to pieces.

Throwing the board aside, the shadow picked up the mag-light and continued inspecting the home room by room. Some boarding on the windows was old, some new … from his estimate and experience the investigator determined that the new boarding was ideal for covering sniper positions in the dunes.

Finally, he reached where all the action was, the main living room. The beam of light slowly absorbed in the scene, the owner using it to recreate the events in sequence. He moved it to the overturned chair the modeling clay in the shape of C4, the scattered mouse traps, and the cut bindings. Finally he moved inside the room, slowly observing the decapitated body that sat slumped next to the main living room window. The body smelled of new blood from the regenerating synthetic liquid and the nose crinkling scent of burned out electrical wire.

"That doesn't happened everyday …" He muttered, focusing the beam on the decapitated head. He turned it on to the floor boards, squinting to see the foot prints in sand. "Two females," he crouched, "four males?" He seemed slightly alarmed.

Slowly he stood up, catching the sight of something in the corner. When he picked it up, it was by the hair. Despite the eternal expressionless mask on its face, the machine formally known to his opponents as Cromartie, looked more mortal in that moment than ever before. His face set in a grim frown, his eyes sucked back, pupils drawn up, almost unseen.

"Who did this?" He asked more to himself then the head … but when he brought it close …

SNIFF!

Despite what he knew looked morbid, he suddenly sniffed the head … something familiar, but out of place, was thickly coded on the head. Placing it down he stood again and noticed that the entire far wall smelled. He took a step back and taking a moment to go over the wall with his light, before once again, arching his finger under his nose, thumb under chin.

"Paint thinner."

Stepping out of the room for a moment the man returned with a popping and crackling suitcase. With a light heave he tossed it at the head.

WHOOSH!

Suddenly the head went up in blue tinted fire. It wasn't a surprise when the flames, fast, furiously, fueled by sparks traveled in three threads, neat and orderly in lines up the wall and slowly but surely formed in to shapes. The man clicked off his flashlight one last time and stared at the writing in clear flame.

_**A GIFT FOR MY BELOVED **_

_**WE'LL BE TOGETHER SOON**_

Slowly, the chemical fire cooked away the flesh off Cromartie's face like melting butter, and In the light of the flames …

The Terminator's eyes glowed red.

* * *

_**Author's notes**_

_**Welcome to the new AU.**_

_**Inspired by many writers … but a shout out especially to Scott Synder.**_


	3. Turn of a Friendly Card

**Turn of a Friendly Card**

Lieutenant Detective Jonathan Reese had three things on his mind tonight- why was Derek such a trouble maker? Why Kyle loved black haired girls so much that he kissed one in his kindergarten class this morning? And most importantly, why is it that the trajectory of this bullet doesn't match the report of the responding officers?

A tall burley man with broad, strong shoulders covered by a wrinkled trench coat, stuck a strong hand under his fedora hat and dug through close-cropped, softly-spiked brown hair. He scratched his scalp with a sneer.

The large penthouse was empty and the dark offset slightly by multicolor of slivers of light reflected on the walls from the tall glass buildings of the skyline surrounding the flat. The tile floors were cold under his shoes as he stood alone watching the scenery change with the passing search light of the helicopter. Posters of Comic Cons of years past hung framed on the wall. A picture of a school girl with her shirt open, a fan off photo blowing a plaid skirt up, revealing a white thong, was posted just above a fireplace. "Learning's cool with the right motivation." He read aloud with a shake of his head.

In the entire glass and neo futuristic furnished living area, the only place that seemed to ever have had any notion for a moment that there had been someone living in it was the computer desk. Papers, upon papers, sat stacked on and near the key board, or on the floor propped against the tower. Candy and snack cake wrappers lay mixed with sheets of math equations and schematics that Detective Reese couldn't even comprehend, at least not this late at night.

He had been lecturing Derek about taunting his teachers in history class and was about to move on to Kyle about why he couldn't kiss girls just cause he can, when he got a text. It was the same coded number like before, the first time he was called by it, its location led him to his desk at the station. Inside was a folder that was dated September 2008. Inside was documented every crime that was about to be committed to the date, hour, minute of the victims time of death. It took some convincing, and an insane amount of overtime and quarterbacking units, but in two weeks, crime was down in his precinct.

When the helicopter's searchlight passed over him, he felt something near him, a presence he had felt before. To tell the truth, it gave him chills, but a veteran of Fallujah wouldn't ever admit to it. He had been through a lot of scary things in life.

"You always have to do that?" he asked, moving his fedora back into place on his head.

"Evening _John_. Word on the street says you had some trouble today." A man's voice greeted him. It was dark and raspy, possibly an attempt to mask the true vocals. A safeguard just in case he thought that Jonathan was going to record his voice. Reese never turned around to get a look at the man he was meeting. The guy had a knack for staying close to the shadows.

"Is that what you hear on the street?" He asked with a quirked eyebrow, smelling a slight, yet attractive, feminine scent and old leather gliding past him. His "Partner" was tall and lithe, athletic in an acrobatic sort of way. Like always he was covered by what Jonathan was starting to get was a trademark leather coat, vintage, dark brown, worn with age, buttons; its collar popped up in the back. Boots were grimy and brown. Hazel eyes followed the shadowy figure stalking to the middle of the crime scene and stopping to observe the poster of the school girl.

"Sometimes … mostly it's just cars." He shrugged, smirking at the poster with the same shake of his head at the catch tag next to the girl's bare butt cheeks.

The man glared begrudgingly at the smart ass comment. "The old jokes are the best aren't they?" he asked sarcastically.

"Some better than others." He motioned his head toward the poster and clacked his way over tile toward the corner of the penthouse lit by the skyline. Loose, grown-out raven curls came into view dyed in a neon green for a second.

Jonathan smirked in reverie of youthful memory. "Yeah … I guess everyone wants some." He replied stuffing hands inside his pockets, following him.

His guest turned toward him. "Meaning?" he asked with some confusion and a tilt of his head that looked to be an inherited tick learned from childhood.

Reese looked shocked. "You know … EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!" he tried to match David Lee Roth's pitch when he sang a sample. "I WANT SOME TOO." He finished.

The shadowed man just blinked at him.

"You know John Cusack and Dancing Hamburgers?" He pushed.

"No, and not many." He countered. He seemed more interested in a bullet hole surrounded by cracked, spider webbed glass around the entry point.

Feeling a blush coming on, Jonathan cleared his throat. "Let's just get on with this." He said with irritation, motioning to a dark spot stained into the tile. He sighed and glanced around in the dim light of the late night around them at the splotch that seemed to form a poorly drawn circle of darkish brown.

"this one hit's a little close to home … victim is James Ellison, 45 … bachelor." Jonathan listed off almost as automated as a frozen computer, stuck in a loop.

"You don't say …?" the detective's ally cut off. He was observing a statue of a topless elf maiden with silver hair riding a black dragon with swirls of white around his neck.

Thomas shook his head. "Yeah … this isn't his place." He replied. The shadow frowned in confusion. "Matthew Murch, 34 … bachelor. We got him down at the station." He sighed, folding his arms.

"Seems pretty cut and dry." The raven haired soldier commented with a sarcastic jab, alluding to a bigger conspiracy, at hand.

"He said that he stepped out to pick up some Chinese food that they ordered … when he came back he was dead." Hazel eyes gazed at the bullet hole.

"You believe him?"

"I don't know …" The Detective sounded conflicted. "Computer engineering, doctored from MIT, Cal-poly. Consultant at Zeira Corp. Doesn't sound like someone who would blow away former LAPD and FBI." He sighed.

"They didn't say what kind of consultant?" The shadow inquired.

"I assume computer stuff … Why?" Something portrayed in the tone caught the detective's attention.

Coming out of the shadows Jonathan spied a pair of hardened emerald eyes framed by a strip of light. "Curious." He stood over the splotch.

"Do you think it has something to do with the motive?" he asked.

The man shrugged. "Could be." He studied the dried blood. "Your victim is was a federal investigator; your prime suspect is lead consultant … maybe he found something Murch here didn't want him to find?" He asked, crouching low to the floor looking over the exit wound stains.

The Detective crossed his arms. "No … Ellison was head of security and private sector investigator for Zeira Corp. Whatever Murch had in here, Ellison was cleared to see it. Ellison was had an Ex-wife and Murch from the post is obviously not a Boy George fan … so it wasn't a lovers quarrel." He watched his ally stand.

"So what's the theory then?" the shadow asked.

Jonathan slipped back out of the light and walked toward the entrance. "We don't know …" he motioned to the door. "There are too many things amiss here." He called.

"Like?"

"Alright." He took position. "The way we figure … if Murch is telling the truth …" he sighed in irritation at the same simulation he had been playing out in his brain all day. "I'm the murderer, I walk into the penthouse." He explained, mocking his steps. Following his lead the shadowed man stood in front of the monologue driven detective.

"You walk into the penthouse?"

"No forced entry."

"So the killer is someone Ellison and Murch knows?"

"No visitors, Ellison's first visit."

"All this Dungeon's and Dragon's shit and no one comes over?"

"According to computer files, all done over Skype."

The man snorted. "Skype … what an obscure reference." The stranger trailed off in amusement.

"Where exactly are you from … where Skype is an obscure reference?" John asked with a puzzled turn of his head. Jonathan Reese wasn't Steve Jobs, but he knew enough about technology to know what Skype was.

Green eyes flashed as if his friend seemed to have made a mistake. "Uh … alright so murderer walks in." He changed the subject.

"In theory." He responded.

"In theory?"

"CI dusted for shoe prints … at the entry. No one but Murch came through that door for two solid months, till Ellison. So either our killer wears the same size shoe and, not only that, but the same shoe … or no one came through the door." He crossed his arms and waited for a response. He didn't seem to get any.

"Trajectories?" The shadow asked.

"Alright …" he sighed in mounting frustration over the same mystery he really didn't want to think about again that night. He made a gun barrel with two fingers, the hammer mimicked by his thumb. "So I come through the door, I fire at Ellison." He moved his thumb forward in a firing action. "And … I miss." He pointed to the hole and webbing cracks in the glass.

His partner walked away, toward the hole. Not missing a beat, Reese kept going with the monologue. "Ellison moves out of the way and I follow." He moved, back to the far wall in front of the shelf of busts and statues next to the window. "Ellison is standing where you are, and I fire again … our kill shot goes through his open mouth, blows out the back of his head and ends embedded ten feet up." He motioned toward the opposite wall across from him. The man turned to follow, finding a massive hole at least ten feet high.

He placed an arched index finger under his nose in thought. "At that angle … the killer would have to be …"

"A hobbit." John finished for him.

There was something about that name that worked a deep, disdainful glare out his consultant detective. Reese realized that maybe his ally might not have the fondest memories associated with that name even in just reference.

The man took a moment to look around, before he turned back. "Give me five minutes with the scene." It didn't sound from Reese's hearing that it was a request.

There was hesitation from the Los Angeles police officer. This was an "I scratch your back and you scratch mine" operation. He had known that from the beginning. He wasn't sure where or how his "Friend" got those figures and breakdowns of crimes that basically didn't exist yet, but he was sure glad that he got them. So on that front Detective Reese was sure he was swinging a righteous sword. But at the same time Jonathan wasn't sure what his "friend" wanted or got out of this particular situation, despite the fact that he owed him for this.

"What are you going to do?" He asked suspiciously.

The leather jacket clad mystery investigator was already wandering around the apartment. "Take a good look around." He said under his breath, a catch of self-amusing sarcasm.

A part of Reese wanted to tell him no … but a grudgingly family part of him found something about the black haired, leather jacketed, avenger of the night sort of guy to trust, which was in direct contrast to any cop part of his brain who knew this was wrong. Setting up camp with a vigilante was bad medicine as it was, but trusting one without anything but a strange bond felt on a cosmic level was worse. Yet, maybe that was why he trusted this guy now … something familiar about the way he seemed to know him, and know to contact Jonathan, out of every other gumshoe and flatfoot in the entire department.

"Five … only five, Batman." There was an almost self-loathing to the mocking, as he disappeared out the door.

Once he was sure that the police officer was gone, the man walked back to the blood stained tile. Suddenly, the quiet room was penetrated by the sound of buzzing, like the adjustment of a camera lens. Green eyes suddenly glowed a soft azure.

"Oracle …" he said touching his ear.

"_Good evening, sir …" _

The voice through the ear piece spoke with a regal English accent, yet lacked emotion of a normal human being.

"I'm at Murch's penthouse … you linked up yet?"

"_A moment … may I enquire that though I applaud your bold decision to test the new lenses, do they work?" _

"Takes some getting used to … switch to detection." He replied with an irritated shake of his head, as if trying to get out a ringing in his ear. His pupils buzzed again, behind two sobering blinks. The penthouse darkened into a dim shadow world, electric wires became visible through the walls in a bright orange, hundreds of finger prints all over tables and on walls showed up in blue, little tags of the LAPD files identification of Matt Murch and his address and Social Security.

"_We're synched" _

The man slowly passed through the living space observing the obstructions marked with evidence letters. The blood glowed neon blue and another marker appeared above it. The owner of the DNA was AB positive, but before he could query the owner, James Ellison's Profile scrolled to the side of the HUD and highlighted several flags, such as Zeira Corp. and former lead agent on the "Sarah Connor Case" above all else.

"Strange …" the man grunted touching the dried blood splatter.

"_I would say so … Cromartie and now James Ellison." _

"Feeling content sending me out to this one, old friend?" He spoke absently. He pensively observed the blood.

"_Quite, sir … though I'd say these two slaying are not coincidental, judging from their relation to one another." _

The man frowned. "I wouldn't be here if it was." He stood.

"_I would question whether it's safe to trust Lieutenant Reese …" _

"If Kyle was …."

"_Sir, you of all things should know that a father isn't the son, in some cases." _

The investigator side eyed no one in particular. "I'm not sure to what you're referring to, madam." He smirked lightly.

"_Indeed." _

He narrowed his eyes and paced toward the far wall with the large hole higher toward the ceiling. His index finger found its place under his nose and thumb under the chin again, staring at the bullet's damage. Once again he turned his attention to the blood streaks and exit wound stains. "Strange …" he said once more.

"_Something, sir?" _

"Nothing that would get your panties in a twist." He rubbed his stubble.

"_I'm not wearing underwear …" _

"Heh, so it's going to be one of those conversations."

"_I'm sure I don't know what you mean, sir."_

"Always know how to ruin a joke."

"_Killing is part of the hardware, sir." _

He shook his head grudgingly at the voice and grunted at something seemingly unrelated, getting back to the job at hand. "Ellison was killed by a sniper round." He announced.

"_Are you sure, sir?" _

He nodded. "In all my life, I've never seen a nine millimeter, even at close range, hit someone so hard as to blow out the back of their skull." Slowly he walked back to the supposed place where the assassin was standing for the kill shot.

"_Seems quite troubling for an assassin to carry that heavy of a weapon for simple "wet work" doesn't it? If the assassin did, indeed, use a sniper rifle, then someone would have surely seen the killer fleeing the scene with such a distinctive weapon, sir? " _

The shadowy detective crouched closing one of his eyes and staring at the hole in the wall. "He didn't come through the door … I doubt Annie Oakley was even inside the building." He frowned at the sightline that the killer had to have used to get the shot. It didn't seem to make any sense, the killer would have to be kneeling low to get the shot off just right. He had scanned the floor and found no Knee imprint signature, residual pant fibers or otherwise that someone had been kneeling in that spot.

"_Impossible … from what you have seen of the murder area, it had to have been inside the penthouse." _

"No prints, forced entry … door was locked according to Murch." He stood up and began studying the bullet hole. He figured that if it was a sniper that the round had to have been fired from outside. Meaning that the round had to have left …

He stopped what he was processing mentally and stared at the shelves behind the kill angle and noticed something strange. Closing one eye again, he made a scope lens with his hand and looked through it at the object, pensively.

"Son of a bitch …" He half laughed, half scoffed at what he saw, stalking toward the shelf.

"_What is it, sir?" _

"A cast iron figure of an astronaut on the moon, busted all to hell." He replied, absently.

"_I'm sure if Mr. Murch is cleared he'd be very upset, sir." _

"No …" He trailed off, inspecting the destroyed collectible tensely. "It's something else." He placed the statue back where he had found it and knelt in front of it, facing the far wall, and made his scope again focusing on the bullet hole high on the opposite wall.

"I'll be damned." His voice seemed to drop into a low, dark register.

"_Sir?" _

He stood up, placing his hands in his faithful leather coat pockets. "Just when things start to make sense, it turns out to be even more screwed up than before." He brooded privately.

"_I don't …?" _

"The assassin ricocheted the shot off the astronaut and blew out the back of Ellison's skull." He cut Oracle off.

"_Are you sure?" _

Emerald eyes hardened. "Positive …" He confirmed. "Two holes, one shot … fired the round through the window, ricochet the bullet off the cast iron statue, bullet goes through the agent's mouth, blow out his brains, the impact point is at an upper angle." He explained.

"_If I recall, there aren't many who could make that shot." _

The man had a gaze a thousand miles away. "No … not many." He confirmed. "Four people on the whole planet that I know of … and in 2008 there are only two."

The penthouse door opened and the broad silhouette of a man in a fedora appeared. "Alright … five minutes are up … I hope you caught something we ..." Jonathan Reese announced coming back on the scene. He paused, entering the room to find it empty. He sighed in agitation and scratched his scalp under his hat.

"Missed"

* * *

"Why not … it's not like there's going to be a traffic problem getting there."

"I'm not that big on Halloween, Kacy."

"How about the Kiddos … I'm sure John and Cameron would love to go?"

"Kacy …"

"Who can it hurt?"

Sarah had been going back and forth with her neighbor/friend for the past hour about her Halloween party she was doing for the neighborhood. The pregnant lady had been pestering her to come for weeks, and Sarah hadn't budged yet. But when Kacy asked her to temporarily fill-in as a waitress at her father's diner, Sarah knew it was a trap to twist her arm.

The diner wasn't exactly the normal kind, it had a retro 50's theme that was currently covered in Halloween decorations. As if that weren't bad enough, Sarah was required to wear a shortened poodle skirt and white shirt of tight nylon. She hated the big pink bow in her hair as well. Over the years Sarah had worn all sorts of uniforms in jobs she had taken, however when she tried on this uniform at the house, she immediately became the punchline of many jokes. Now she could only imagine that she would be seeing members of her family through her eight-hour shift just to continue the joke.

"It'll only be for like an hour …" the blond pushed from her stool at the bar. Sarah set down a burger basket in front of a portly man in a tan vest and a trucker cap.

"Why are you pushing for us to go?" Sarah sighed, leaning on the counter. Kacy scratched her neck and looked away as if checking to see if anyone she knew was around.

"Look I didn't want to say anything, but some of the other people on our street, they're starting to whisper, you know?" she said quietly.

"_I'm in suburban hell." _

Sarah often chose homes in the city for this very reason. In the city, people kept to themselves and couldn't care less about what others did. But in the suburbs it was almost a hobby for the neighbors to keep tabs on each other in an Olympic style competition of paranoia and nosiness. It was like living under a microscope operated by old women who sneered if you let your "daughter" out in too short of a skirt, or if you live with your "Brother in-law", and oh how she hated the politics of suburbia.

"Ma'am …?" the trucker interrupted Sarah's angry musings. She glared and turned to the out-of-state trucker. "I didn't want tomatoes on the burger." He pointed to the red fruit on his hamburger.

He got a feeling like he had poked a bear, a very beautiful bear, but a bear none-the-less, as Sarah snatched the basket from in front of him and tossed the bun down. She picked the red slices off the burger, jamming the bun back; she slid it to the man.

"Thanks …" he frowned flatly.

Turning back, the raven-haired beauty sighed at the blond who was dipping a french fry in pickle juice. "You're not going to let this go are you?" she lowered her gaze.

"Nope" Kacy ate the fry with a smile.

"Fine …" she relented.

"Yay!" Kacy clapped her hands lightly. Sarah gave her an amused grin.

"Look at it this way, there is going to be a bunch of hot guys dressed in costumes; I swear it's like a fantasy party." She winked.

"I'm good." Sarah scoffed a laugh.

"Oh, come on, you got the most smoking body I've ever seen, and I bet there's a wild woman in there just aching to get out. Plus … it's not like _Derek _is around that much anymore." Kacy shrugged. Sarah turned to the woman darkly as if she had treaded on dangerous ground.

"Kacy phone!" a cook in a chef's hat called from the kitchen.

"All over it!" She replied, seeing the need to get out alive of the situation.

Sarah clenched her jaw as she pulled her cell phone out of her apron pocket.

"Waitress!" the trucker called to Sarah, she put the phone to her ear and gave him a death glare. "Never mind …" he grunted, finding the sugar interesting all of the sudden.

* * *

_She was there, tucked into his arms, safe and asleep. His hand traced the smooth skin of her bare back, stroking her scars tenderly. He kissed her head as she lay naked against him. She was at peace with the world for the moment, and as long as she was, so was he. _

"_Babe …" _

"_Babe …" _

"DEREK!"

Derek Reese shot up from his reclined position on top of a hotel suite's bedcover, and looked around alertly.

"What, what …?" he asked the attractive Asian woman, clothed in her underwear, and under the sheets reading a magazine.

"Your phone is buzzing." Jesse didn't look up from her reading.

Sure enough, his pocket was vibrating. He reached into his blue jeans, and pulled out the phone.

"Hello?" he said shakily still recovering from sleep.

"_**29, October" **_a voice said into the phone

"October 29th" he responded

"_**Where the hell are you?"**_ Sarah asked angrily from the other line.

"Where am I supposed to be?" he asked.

"_**Meet me at the diner, three hours." **_

The phone cut off, and was followed by dial tone. Derek sighed and laid back.

"Who was it?" Jesse flipped the page.

"Who do you think?" He yawned.

Jesse chuckled with scorn. "That woman needs to get laid." She waited for Derek to responded appropriately to her response.

He smiled faintly while a shot of guilt ran through him, as flashes of the woman in his arms somehow matched the woman who had just finished the chewing out he'd received.

"_Reality is over rated." _

He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and looked at his mostly undressed girlfriend. "How long was I out?" he grunted sitting up again.

"Well … you ripped my shirt open and slipped off my jogging shorts and you were working your way to my panties … and then I got snores." There was an irritated inflection to the Australian accent.

Derek's face reddened in embarrassment. "Uh … sorry." Was all he said, clearing his throat.

"You were tired …" she shrugged casually, looking at him. He gave a grateful smile at her for sparing him. "I would be to if I had some annoying bitch running me around day and night." she sneered, going back to her magazine.

"Hey!" Derek snapped at her. Jesse slapped the periodical down and looked at him in confusion.

"_Where the hell did that come from?" _

There was a silence in the room as both seemed lost for words.

"Just uh … just watch it, okay." He finally spoke. The scantily clad female brought her knees to her chest and fixed him with a thoughtful look.

"Derek, just because Kyle was in love with her, doesn't mean you have to show undying loyalty." She tilted her head.

Her sentence struck a nerve in Derek that was the equivalent of a root canal. Sarah had, and always will be Kyle's girl, his love, his angel. So was he betraying his brother's memories, was he betraying Kyle by dreaming, by feeling this way about his princess?

"Why don't you come over here … and finish me off?" Jesse smiled seductively, reaching for Derek. Guilt overtook him, and he backed away from her.

"I uh, I need to go." He got up, and walked to the door.

"Really?" she said, getting to her knees.

"Sorry … I just got to go." He grabbed his jacket and exited the hotel room.

* * *

John Connor sat on a diner stool reading the newspaper.

"_Garbage" _

He hated the Los Angeles Times; everything was opinion and not so much news anymore. But either way it was a nice distraction from what had been playing in his head. He had just come from letting Cameron have it for, once again, shadowing him and Riley on their mall trip. He sighed in disappointment at himself, because he had called her names, and said things that earned the cyborg mocking laughter from all of the girls in the dress store she had been using as a stake out. The incident tainted the rest of his and Riley's hang out, and he had decided to go, leaving Riley to herself.

John touched his thumb and index finger to the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes. He felt so much like an abusive husband these days, publicly crucifying and belittling his protector. All he needed was a white tank top and to slap her around when she brought him dinner. Riley had encouraged his behavior, telling him that he needs to give her a firm hand when it came to his privacy.

However John was starting to feel like he was going way too far in this war of independence with his family. He missed his mother and their talks; there was a time when they told each other everything. It seemed like a long time ago now, but it wasn't really. After killing Sarcissian, he didn't know what to say to her, he didn't know what to say to himself. He had killed a man, he knew it was for the right reasons, but he couldn't handle the guilt of knowing Sarah had guilt over the incident. He didn't like her knowing that there were no limits to what he would do for her.

That went double for Cameron. She knows he had more than just feelings for her, she knew that he was in love with her, and she had used that against him. Now, after he'd saved her life, she believes that he can't be trusted. He felt so exposed with both people he loved knowing the lengths and his limits. He felt like he was too close for comfort.

All of these things had led to Riley. He didn't know a thing about her, and her him. It was the perfect set up, no strings and no questions, just a running buddy who generally liked him for him. But lately there had been something off about her. He chalked it up to him being paranoid when it came to the women in his life; especially after the incidents on his birthday. But for some reason he felt the more time he spent with Riley, the more he was drifting away from the people he loved.

"_Why do I have to choose?"_

He gave an exasperated sigh at the situation he was placed in.

"You okay?"

He looked up to see Sarah in her nylon, Mary Sue, fifties uniform. John nodded his head silently.

"Dodgers made a bad trade." He lied showing her the sports page. Sarah frowned, knowing he was lying to her. John lowered his head, pretending to read the paper, and attempted to avoid the hurt expression on her face; the one his five-year-old self had proclaimed his best friend. After a moment Sarah flipped a page on her pad and left, giving her son one last look. John breathed easily when she was gone.

"_I wish there was some sort of sign from my future as to what to do about Cameron." _

His thoughts were interrupted by man who dropped onto the stool next to him. He was tall, with an athletic build, with a designer scruff on a handsome face. He was dressed in blue jeans. A faded black t-shirt was covered by a well-worn, leather button-up jacket with its collar propped up in the back. In the back of John's mind he could've sworn he had seen it somewhere before, almost as if he had known who owned it once. The familiar must of leather and the hint of a feminine smell that made him feel comfortable and safe. John glanced at him, and then went back to the account of a football game, trying to shake that feeling.

"Hey kid, you know where I am?" the man had a deep, yet youthful voice. John turned to stare into familiar, stoic Green eyes that made him pause. The man twitched an eyebrow at the reaction.

"Malt Shop Diner" he said after a moment.

The thirty -something frowned in small annoyance. "Yeah, thanks, I mean what district?" he growled tiredly.

"Van Nuys" John responded as if the man was clueless.

"Awesome" he said flatly, running his hand through thick, black curls. John observed him a moment, sensing an uneasy tension.

"Hey, you okay buddy?" John asked, though he wasn't sure why he cared.

"Yeah … fine." He said closing his eyes and touching the bridge of his nose with his index finger and thumb the way John usually did.

"Tough morning?" the boy asked, with a small curiosity, spotting a thin yet somewhat fierce, facial scar that he could swear came from a sword duel from the cut angle.

"Tough life" He breathed a scoff.

John let out a commiserating chuckle. "I know the feeling." He sighed.

The man threw a matching pirate grin at him. John felt a sudden kinship to the stranger who was digging in his coat pocket for something. Spotting his mom, John called out to her.

"Hey can I get a coffee?" John asked. Sarah nodded taking a cup and a pot. She placed the mug in front of her son, but he motioned to the man next to him. Sarah frowned and slid it over and poured the distracted man a cup. He smelled it a second, letting the vapors seep to his consciousness letting them wake him up, he finally sipped it.

"Thanks …" he took an almost startled paused, and locked a stare with Sarah, who nodded but seemed just as taken with him as he was her.

John felt a little awkward sitting watching the stare down that was lasting past the social norm. But then John guessed it only came natural … at closer inspection, John realized that the two could be twins, mirror reflections almost, if not for the stubble, the strangers tanned complexion, facial scar, and little distinguishing facial differences.

"Mom …" John cleared his throat, pulling out some money. Sarah snapped out of the trance and blinked; she smiled softly at the man, and turned to John who handed her two dollars. Then with a cheeky grin he handed the waitress a fifty dollar tip. The private joke the two engaged in suddenly made Sarah's day as she walked away with a happy grin; because after five months she finally saw her baby shine through all the angst and anger. Smiling to himself, John turned to the man who had a weirded out look on his face. It seemed as if he was fighting not to poke John for now other reason than to see if he was actually real. John wasn't sure why but the man looked so familiar.

"_Those eyes, they look just like …" _

"Umm … do we know each other?" John asked, interrupting his own thoughts. The man grunted and looked back at his coffee a bit too quickly.

"Don't think so." He said, avoiding the teens gaze. John frowned at the reaction.

There was a buzz in John's hoody pocket that took his attention. He pulled a cell phone out and flipped it open, reading a text.

**Want to go to a movie?**

**-Riley**

He sighed, looking up at Sarah who was pretending that she wasn't watching him check his phone. He turned back to the man who was drinking his coffee in silence. Those sober eyes stung John's heart as he thought of Cameron.

"Take it easy." John said to the man.

"Yeah" he nodded.

As he left he felt eyes burning a hole in the back of his head. He gazed back at the man who was still slumped over sipping his coffee. Something about him woke an urge to go find Cameron.

* * *

Outside a strip mall Cameron stood at a window, staring at a passel of little girls in tutus. They wobbled and stumbled as a pretty blond teen in a leotard smiled, helping the kindergarten aged girls form the right ballet positions. Cameron tilted her head at the sight, and observed that the girls would not achieve optimal balance for another several years due to their age and height. A pretty, little brunette girl, who wasn't paying attention, turned her wondering gaze to Cameron. The girl waved at her with a big smile. The older girl mimicked the motion, which only brightened the little ballerina's smile. Their moment was ruined by the blond who came up to the girl and chastised her for not paying attention. Looking up the girl gave a friendly smile to Cameron, followed by a "See what I have to work with?" look. Cameron returned the smile softly before the blond went on her way.

"Hey, what are you doing?" The voice of John Connor called to her. She turned her head to meet his gaze. His eyes weren't focused on her, and he was shifting his weight a little.

"_He's guilty" _

"I was simply watching toddlers attempt to learn the intricacies of the hidden language of the soul." She explained. John gave confused smile at her explanation; he walked up next to her sharing her view of the studio.

"Getting any good?" he asked.

"They all have potential, but I believe the little brunette has the right body type for such a profession as dancing, but she lacks the focus." She gave a human-like sigh of disappointment. John chuckled shaking his head at her. Cameron turned and looked him in the eye.

"I thought you didn't want to see my stupid look of puppy-dog-affection as long as you lived?" She asked in an emotionless voice despite the fact that there was something hurt in her eyes. John bit his lip at his hot words being repeated to him. He looked down in shame and cleared his throat.

"About that …" he spoke up.

"I'm sorry" Cameron said suddenly.

"For what?" John looked up at her in confusion.

"I once again tread on your personal life after I said that I wouldn't … you're right to be angry." She spoke in a sad voice, and then she held out a bag to him. He took it, shell shocked at her sentence.

"What's this?" he asked.

"When you have hurt someone, it's customary to purchase a tight present for them." She replied.

John suddenly got images of a small apartment where Cameron brings him dinner while he's sitting on a couch, he tastes it, and then with a look of disgust he slaps her.

"Cam, I can't take this …" he shook his head in guilt.

"Why not?" She seemed slightly offended.

"Because …" he shifted again. "Because, I'm the one who did the hurting." He spoke with shame in his voice, it was a tone she didn't like to hear from him.

"John …" she said in protest but he held his hand out to stop her.

"I shouldn't have said those thing to you … it was wrong and there is no excuse." He said with the lowering of his head. Then he pulled something out of his hoody pocket.

"I'm sorry" he handed her an object wrapped in purple paper. She tilted her head, and looked at the present.

"What is it?" she asked weighing it in her hands.

John smiled playfully and gave a shrug that made him look like Sarah Connor's son.

"Open it and find out."

Cameron tore open the paper to reveal a pair of brand-new ballet slippers.

"I know you lost your old ones in the house fire, and when I saw you standing out here I thought you might want some new ones." He responded with his hands in his pockets.

"Thank you" she grinned the same grin he received in Red Valley before Cromartie's assault on them. He shrugged humbly. She then turned to the brown bag in his hand. He looked at her, then the package in his hand. Cameron motioned him to open it. With a guilty press of his lips he opened the brown paper bag and extracted a large, sleek-looking, chromed .45 pistol with a rubber grip.

"Wow, this is …" John couldn't find the words to expresses how he was feeling.

"I know you wanted a weapon that was your own, and when I saw it, it reminded me of you." Cameron added with a hopeful look in her normally stoic eyes. John nodded feeling a strange attachment to the weapon already.

"Thanks …" he smiled his trade mark pirate grin. The couple got lost in each other's eyes. Time seemed to stand still as their gazes absorbed every fiber of their beings.

"Hey, Cat Fancy!" A blond in a low-cut tank top and jeans walked toward them. John broke eye contact, and quickly hid Cameron's present. Though she understood the action, it stung her a bit.

"Hey Riley …" he half sighed.

"Way to flatter a girl." She grinned, giving him a playful push. Turning, Riley found Cameron still staring at John. "What's wrong with her?" she whispered loudly.

"Nothing is wrong. John and I were just making conversation." Cameron glared at the girl.

"Sorry, but when John didn't text back, I thought he died or something." She said with nudge John's way.

"You expect every person you text to text back?" Cameron challenged passively.

"If they're smart." The girl tossed an arm around John's shoulder. Cameron balled her fist at the action. She immediately unclenched her fist and feared that she just experienced a glitch.

"I should go." Cameron said quickly. Riley looked pleased at the statement, but John looked stunned with whiplash.

"Hey … you don't have to." John said catching her hand.

Cameron became conflicted with what to do, on one hand she didn't want to leave John alone for his own protection, but on the other, his safety depended on her keeping her distance. She was also letting her judgment be influenced by the strange feeling of euphoria that was coursing through her at John's touch. She ran a diagnostic to find that her systems didn't record any glitches in her chip since she had masqueraded as Allison Young. The incident was a reminder from Skynet's sentient consciousness trapped in her chip that she was a killer and nothing more. Yet, the more moments like this with John, the more she felt like the risk was worth it.

"Okay John." She smiled and nodded. He grinned back at her and returned the nodded.

"Movie then?" Riley snatched John's hand off Cameron's and took it in hers.

"Umm yeah …" he responded.

Not one to be one upped, Cameron locked her arm in Johns earning her a private glare from Riley. As the three teens walked down a yellowed sidewalk, John asked a question.

"Anyone want to see the wizard?"

* * *

"You think he likes his women baking buns?"

Sarah gave Kacy a strange look as the pregnant woman leaned over the counter watching the rugged stranger like a horny teenager.

"Was that weird to say?" she asked Sarah, who made a small gesture with her thumb and index finger. "Uh … if I get a call from his teacher one day, because he's saying strange things in class, I don't think I can punish him." Kacy patted her baby bump with a sigh. Sarah smiled and shook her head.

"Ah … he did it again!" the blond said with an alarmed, happy voice.

"Did what?" Sarah counted her tip money.

"He so looked at you." She said with a smug grin. Sarah looked up at the man who seemed to be absorbed in writing in a weathered, leather bound journal while munching on his third burger basket and going through his fourth soda.

Sarah had to admit that when she poured him his coffee that John had bought him, there was something very familiar about him. There was also something between them that could only be described as a connection of some sort.

"You should ask him to the party." Kacy smiled.

"I'm okay." Sarah frowned.

"Oh come on, he's clearly into you, why not buy a sexy costume and let him defile you?" Kacy gave a raunchy smile and bumped Sarah. She once again gave her friend a weird look.

"Did I say something weird again?" Kacy asked with a frown like she was replaying the sentence in her head.

"I don't think you know how to use _defile_ with the right context." Sarah stated.

"Really …?" Kacy's frown grew. "Jeez, I have been using that word since junior year." She shrugged.

This time Sarah caught the look he gave her. It was passing, but it was defiantly directed at her. Paranoia got the better of her with thoughts of him being a cop or even a machine.

"_There's only one way to find out."_

Seeing that he was low on his coffee, Sarah found her opening and approached him, ignoring Kacy's encouraging swat to her butt and an encouraging "go get'em tiger" face.

With the scratching of a well sharpened engineer's pencil he seemed to be doing math, by hand, a line of geometry and a precise angle was sketched on the page, along with what looked like a rough blueprint of a room. Sarah suddenly found herself intrigued and somehow drawn to the pensive eyes that flicked back and forth at the numbers.

"You angling for a tip?" The man asked her flippantly, beginning to jot down small footnotes, mentioning something on trajectories and 50 MM's.

A hard blush came over Sarah as she found herself being less than discreet in her watching of him do his calculations. She bit her lip and when matching emerald eyes caught her, she gave him a charming smile despite the school girl mark of embarrassment.

"That looks hard." She pointed out. The recovery would take some finesse in order not to have the man on the defensive. But surprisingly, despite what she thought, he gave her a slight grin of affection.

"If you think that this is hard you should see, what's making me figure it out." He replies with a quirk of an eyebrow going back to his notes.

There was something about the way he spoke to her, that she found easy to continue. Most of the time when she was charming her way into something she had to be someone else, had to take someone else's perception of her and turn it into a cash cow of information based on the situation and person. But with the stranger, she found it easier to just be herself. Maybe it was because, he looked like her. Maybe it was the way he smiled at her, that strange irrationally unconditional ... love? No, it couldn't be love … that's, that's not possible.

She shrugged a shoulder for conversation and not to get bogged down on the details of what that smile was. "I was never that good with math." She sighed longingly at the ease he seemed to be jotting down numbers and formulas.

"Neither am I … despite the clear intellectual look about me." He scoffed with humor. Sarah glared playfully.

"Doesn't look like that from where I'm standing." She replied, crossing her arms. The man smirked at the comment and just as she was about to continue heard the noise of something to the likeness of a camera lens buzzing. She turned around, looking all over the diner in her viewing range, hopefully not to find someone taking her picture. But to her confusion everyone wasn't paying attention to her or taking pictures.

"I'm a bit of a cheater." He admitted with the same casual shrug "I use a trick if you will." He replied. Concentrating once again on the conversation, Sarah went back and smirked shaking her head in puzzled anticipation.

"Which is what?"

"That's the trick."

"What trick?"

"Exactly" He wiggled his eyebrows teasingly at her.

There was something about the way he talked, the teasing nature of affection that reminded her strangely … of John. Though unlike John, she couldn't drag him down and force him to say "Sarah Connor is the queen of everything, and John Connor bows to her intellect." As she pressed his face into the table or couch cushion. She also came to the conclusion that the man probably wouldn't grunt at her half heartily afterward and call her a "Knuckle dragging bully" as she lay on top of his back.

It occurred to her that she had smiled more in one conversation than she had in almost a year. Not a smile that got her something, or a smile to cover another emotion as she talked. A real genuine smile that came from talking to a complete stranger that she felt she had known for years. There were few people in her life that made her feel that way.

Despite his charming if not know it all attitude, she came to the conclusion that he was some sort of detective, but not a police officer … and not a threat. With that look he had for her, he was human. She turned back only to find Kacy making a very inappropriate face, nodding her head to her encouragingly.

"Friend of yours?" He asked. Both watched a suddenly caught diner manager startle, running face first into a tile wall, before finding the swing doors to the kitchen.

"Sometimes I wonder …" She said a distractedly, a found smile forming.

But the feeling was short lived when Charlie Dixon came through the door, eyes sparking with an old love when he saw her in that moment of true happiness.

* * *

The stranger watched the black haired waitress with the nylon Mary Sue 50s uniform and bow in her hair. Sarah Connor was something to behold in any time or age. She was a specimen of athleticism and beauty, a true beauty. She was not something you find in a magazine, or heavily coded with makeup, air brushed for cameras. It was a real human beauty. She had an age line or two from stress, smoker's marks above the lip and yet she was the most beautiful woman he ever met. she was the kind of pretty that a man that grew up in a never ending battlefield, that lived an outlaw's life on a pirates ship as a teen and lost everything as young man … all in a hellish wasteland, could cherish.

He didn't want to admit it, but she had for those few moments enchanted him. He felt weird afterward. He used to think about her all the time, wondered what she was like. He wanted to know what she had been really like, not the made up stories that went around the camp fires and tunnels … and not the idealized saint that he heard of in the family quarters as a child, he wanted the real woman.

The thought came and went that maybe it was fate that led him here, that out of all the gin joints in all the world he was drawn to the one occupied with the familiar strangers of his past. Seeing the young hormonal John Connor was one thing, the picture of a secret past of reading newspapers in a diner was actually something the mystery investigator could actually get behind. He was less enthusiastic to see the teen that would grow to have a face that the man would see every day for all of his childhood.

But he couldn't take his eyes off Sarah, not that he was somehow attracted to her, but hypnotized. It was in a way how you stare at a photograph for the first time and see something connected to your existence that captures your attention and imagination. You go through the rest of the day, but that face, that humanity that you never knew existed till this one moment stays with you all day and night, it haunts you.

He tried to resist, concentrating on the numbers his HUD was multiplying and dividing for him. The lens projected trajectories versus miles, where the sniper shot from, what angle he fired at. He tried to fill his mind with the possibilities. But every time he looked up, she was there again. A wonderment and fascination from childhood became a little more real as he studied her like a painter's masterpiece.

She was standing at the end of the bar counter, talking quietly, but harshly to a man in his mid-forties, with a buzz cut, and an EMS uniform. He looked like he was pleading with her for something and she looked uncomfortable and even hurt a little.

He cleared his throat when her gaze caught his. She stared at him for a moment eyes stern but glassy. It was one of those awkward moments when someone stared at you, but had no expectation of a reaction. The eye lock wasn't dependent, or unwanted, just a passing interest. The man she was talking too caught their look and he studied her object of attention. The investigator just glared at him.

"Asshole …" He grunted and went back to notes.

He knew it was time to get back to work, when he felt their eyes on him. With a sigh he stared back down at the worn leather bound, binder journal.

The line of attack for sniffing out the conspiracy seemed simple enough. He had two victims, an FBI Agent and a T-888. If it had been any other soldier from the future, they wouldn't take into account the machine as a victim, which maybe is what the assassin was banking on.

He had been through the Journal at least hundred times and with the notes on the North Hollywood massacre from the internet, it would seem that the unemployed actor that destroyed a Hostage Rescue TAC team was in fact who the Journal names Cromartie. Where it got interesting was that the only member of the TAC team to survive was none other than victim number two … James Ellison.

Ellison was also in the Journal and on file. He was flagged on the computer, because he was the agent in charge in the FBI's hunt for John and Sarah Connor. It just so happened that John and Sarah Connor were the connection between both the victims, and if this was any other case be the prime suspects. But the problem was that he knew from the Journal that one, they were nowhere near any of the crime scenes and more importantly, two hundred chin ups a day doesn't give you the strength to pull a Machines head off.

Then there was the message at the crime scene in fact there were messages at both crime scenes, the one in flames at the old warehouse and the one left in the evidence at Murch's penthouse … bouncing a bullet off a trophy. There was only one person that could decapitate a machine and bounce a bullet, and she also happened to be deeply in love with one of the two persons connected to the victims. He knew in his soul she loved enough to do everything to ensure John's safety … but, it didn't sound like something she would do or know how to do, not yet.

Suddenly a figure dropped in the stool next to him. But being as this was a diner and he was in the middle of updating his thoughts on the case he ignored it. Yet, he could feel the criticizing eyes of someone leering at him suspiciously. He turned to find the man who had been talking to Sarah sizing him up from a stool over.

"Can I help you?" he asked dismissively.

"Couldn't help but notice that you seemed to be very keen on watching Sarah." The man didn't seem appreciate the Soldier's tone.

"Why, you fishing for a date _sun beam_?" He shot back arrogantly, taking as much of an immediate dislike to the man as he had him.

Charlie Dixon clenched his jaw at the dismissive tone shot back at him, watching his target of suspicion go back to writing in a journal. "You know … she's not much for arrogant jerks." Dixon continued.

The unknown vigilante scoffed at the middle aged man. "Well, looks like we have more in common then you thought." He slapped the paramedic's chest in a mock friendly motion. There was a fire in the weekend biker's eyes as the younger man returned to his book.

"You're a real piece of work you know that?" He said with an angry huff.

"I'll pass the sentiments to mom and dad." He volleyed back his pencil scratching the entry. The closing retorts from both men were just in time for another presence to hear from behind the counter.

"What's going on?" Sarah asked forcefully. Charlie shifted uncomfortably, while her friend from earlier just seemed amused.

"Well either _Fuzzy's _in love or he's trying to play matchmaker." The soldier replied easily with a shrug. Sarah turned an angry glare at Charlie, who seemed very unhappy with the detective's new nickname for him. There was a silent moment before she unceremoniously dumped a brown to-go bag on the counter.

"You know where the door is." She addressed the EMS coldly. Charlie took the bag and, with one last sour look at the young man, he left. There was a beat of silence as Sarah paused with a conflicted hurt expression on her face.

"I miss him already." The detective sighed sarcastically.

"Oh …" Sarah ran a hand thru her raven curls, remembering that she had all but defended her new acquaintance against a man she loved once. "I'm sorry about that." She apologized. Sarah frowned trying to get her head right, to function properly.

"So … what was _that_ about?" the man asked, stopping his mimicking of the same hand through raven curls unaware they were synched. Sarah shot him a look that said it was none of his business.

"Huh, I seem to remember a certain waitress nosing through my journal …" he gave her a poignant but playful look. Sarah glared at him, but relented.

"He's my ex-fiancé … his wife left him three months ago, so now he thinks he's seen the light when it comes to us." She shook her head at the explanation, as if the thought of the situation was stressful to her heart.

"Don't feel the same?"

"It's not that …" Sarah shifted. "It's sort of like I have two paths in front of me, each from different parts of my life and now I'm forced to choose." She shrugged playing with a sugar packet container.

"You got a preference?'

"I'm not sure … Charlie is the safe bet, he loves me, loves my son, but he's not suitable for the life we lead …" Sarah paused, stuck her hands out and looked up in confusion. She earned a commiserating chuckle for her goofy gesture.

"Sounds to me like you're holding Sun Beam at arm's length, but you're waiting on someone else." He gave her a Cheshire grin. Sarah gave him a look that said he hit the nail on the head.

"Maybe …" Sarah sighed giving another conflicted face into space.

"In the end … it's whoever is willing to go the extra mile for you and your boy. That's who deserves you." He toasted her with a small smile, and downed the last of his Coffee.

Her face lightened and a grateful smile graced her lips as she watched him. It made her feel good to every once in a while to talk to someone about her problems and receive advice. It took less than a couple of seconds before she realized that she had just opened up to a complete stranger about a very private problem. There was something about the Green eyed man that projected a sense of deep caring for her that made her feel something warm inside, but also suspicion at why he cared so much.

The diner door opened followed by a familiar voice that announced the arrival of a three people.

"I'm not a soccer mom and I'm sure as hell not you two's limo driver!" Derek chastised the two teens he was opening the door for.

"Whatever" John scoffed in irritation at his uncle's ranting.

Sarah moved off her musing and went to her family.

"What is it?" She sighed at the soldier.

"Derek is angered because we needed a ride from the movie theaters; I believe he shares a stereotypical male fear of domestication." Cameron responded with a small shared irritation at the ranting.

"And how." John joined in, teasing the older man with a smug grin at his reddening face. Derek looked back and forth between the teens and scoffed.

"Shut up" he growled, and slinked away to talk to Sarah.

John went back to the spot he'd been sitting an hour ago to find his partner form earlier.

"You still here?" John asked with a friendly chuckle. The soldier nodded at him watching John sit on the stool next him.

"Just trying to figure something out." he replied.

"Yeah, you seemed a little rough around the edges earlier." John shrugged.

"More than a little." he breathed, looking at him in the same sort of weird look that he had when John left. There was an awkward pause between the two before each looked the other way.

That's when the vigilante saw her, stalking toward the two of them, back straight, no wasted movements. Her hair was curled in chocolate ringlets, her tan skin uncovered by the miniskirt and spaghetti strap tank top shimmered in the fluorescents above. She looked like an ethereal creature of death, with her golden flecked eyes predatory and seemingly dead and yet the man knew better. In those eyes she saw things that no else did. But, then, that was his problem. She, unlike John could see him for what he was and that could lead to a host of complications that had disaster written all over it.

He found his feet in a less than subtle manner, which caught John's eye. He watched him, with a startle. "Hey … you alright?" he turned and found Cameron coming.

"Yeah … too much coffee, makes rushing to the bathroom quite the …" He caught sight of the distracted cyborg and a childlike emotion welled inside of him for a moment. "Paradox" he said the word like a curse.

John didn't notice the inflection, his attention drawn to his protector, his mind far afield. "Heh … don't talk to me about …" he swiveled back to face his companion, only to find no one there. "Paradoxes"

"I wasn't …"

"Guh!" John would have fell out of his stool in surprise if there hadn't been the cushion of Cameron's upper body to absorb him. He squeaked his stool around to face her. "Cameron, come on we talked about sneaking up on people." He sighed.

"I didn't, you saw me coming." She protested.

Seeing her side of things, he sighed, relenting to her point of view. "Yeah, I just didn't expect you to get here so fast." He tried not to stare too hard at her bare naval right in front of him.

"You have a new friend …"

He felt like a scathed alley cat at her tone. "What?" he looked away from the bare skin in front of him, up to her. She was staring at the space occupied by a half cup of coffee and leather bound journal open.

"Oh … umm more of an acquaintance … CAM!" He had been in the middle of explaining to her, the somewhat complicated educate of coffee shop companionship when the cyborg moved to the spot and began reading the journal.

"What?" She asked.

He put a hand over his face turning toward back, where the restrooms where. "You can't just read peoples private stuff." He chastised. But Cameron frowned and defiantly flicked eyes across the page.

_**Ryan's Journal **_

_**October 29**__**th**__**, 2008**_

_**It's all so jumbled …**_

_**First the machine and now Ellison … the two people who were hunting the old man. The kill shot was a ricochet … blew out the back of his head. The only person who knows how to do that is a woman I'm looking at and she would never kill, not in a million years … **_

_**It couldn't be the old man, I was sitting next to him this morning watching him read the sports page … he didn't strike me as someone who just blew away a good Christian man. **_

_**Mom … no, mom doesn't know how to do that … not yet, not in this time. The old man hasn't taught her how. **_

_**The markings, the message on fire, the bullet bounce ... Someone is killing off the blood hounds one by one. But I don't know if they're helping, or taking out the competition. **_

_**Maybe I'm over thinking it, maybe there's nothing out there at all watching from the shadows. Maybe I'm seeing conspiracies because I'm scared of making a mistake, scared of losing all of them again. **_

_**Sitting in a diner in Van Nuys thumbing through the old man's journal isn't helping either. But reading it seems to remind me of the empty decades of time I've gone through. The memories on the page and in my head … they just seem to linger on and on. And it hurts more than I care to admit.**_

_**Now after everything, there she is standing close, watching me, she looks the same, still one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. There's no one like her on the planet, but those eyes, it's like a curse, I look into them and all I see is my ignorance and failure to stop what was coming.**_

_**If I had known that it would cost me, I would have done it different. But I've sworn over my father's bones it will be different this time. All I can do is protect her and keep her safe. That's all I can hope for on this lost highway.**_

_**End Entry. **_

The Cyborg's eyes grew wide and she turned from her spot to John who was covering her, just in case his "Friend" came back and saw a stranger reading his journal.

"Who wrote this?" She demanded.

John frowned at her tone, snapping back his gaze in surprise. "What?" he asked. It wasn't that he didn't understand what she was asking, it was more that Cameron's demeanor had suddenly changed, it was like night and day.

"Who wrote this?" She said again in the same unchanged demanding tone.

John looked around. "Ummm …" he trailed off. Where ever he looked, he found no sign of the man he had been talking too. "I guess he went to the bathroom … why?" He asked.

Wordlessly, Cameron broke off in pursuit of the phantom that John had been talking too. With a huff, he grabbed at her, in a restraining manner. She stopped when he didn't expect it, his body this time cushioning her. Her shoulder rested against the teen's chest, her eyes cast curiously on his hand in hers. She lifted their hands observing their fingers … which automatically intertwined, as if first nature.

"Cameron …" John sounded breathless.

She watched the digits with interest for a moment longer, before daring to match his long look. His emerald eyes seemed strangely soulful, a John that the cyborg had never seen before and was drawn too like a firefly to a forest.

"What is it?" he asked. She couldn't explain the slow meaningful dulcet voice he spoke to her with. It was as if they're physical contact had turned him into someone new. She turned her head toward the bathrooms and blinked, but returned to John.

"Nothing" She turned back to their fingers.

Then like a strong gust blowing the magic dust out of his eyes, John gave a sobering blink. "Heh …" he untwined his fingers and took a step back. But Cameron followed, her hand still holding his. Her eyes searching … almost pleading for the John she saw to come back.

"Cameron …" he gulped nervously. She blinked in waiting, till she noticed she still had his hand.

"Oh" She remembered that it was customary for someone to say, when forgetting themselves. She let go of John's. "Sorry" She continued to search for the John she found moments ago.

"I'm not going!" Derek announced out loud, trying to walk away from Sarah from behind the counter. Then with an avenging force she slammed Derek's retreating form down on the counter.

"You are not making me go to this alone … you hear me! You are coming with me and that's final!" she growled dangerously, pinning him to the malt shop bar.

"What's going on?" John gave an embarrassed sigh motioning Cameron to come along to see what the parental figures who seemed to treat all their spats like high school dramas where fighting about now. Cameron trailed behind, but gave one last hard look at the journal, then at the rest room area.

"_We're_, going to Kacy's Halloween party!" Sarah announced to John and Cameron who arrived in time to watch her put more pressure on her roommates head. Derek shifted his gaze to John with a look of vengeance.

"If I have to come so do they." Derek demanded motioning to the two teens.

"Oh … no, I'm not going to that thing." John shook his head at the woman who raised him.

"I'm sorry, I don't believe there was a choice in this." Sarah flicked commanding eyes to her family.

There was a sad resignation from all of them when they realized that there was no getting out of this. That was, except for Cameron, who was under the impression from their reaction that this "Halloween" was a suicide mission. And that meant that John's safety was now more important than ever.

Their bickering was interrupted by Kacy, who had arrived with Sarah's pay for her one day of service.

"Thanks a lot for your help today Sarah, it's too bad you were only a one day temp …" Kacy sighed slipping the check into Sarah's tip pouch while the woman still had her roomy pinned to the bar with her forearm.

Seeing that she once again had gotten her way, Sarah released Derek and straightened her skirt. She motioned all of her family out of the restaurant. Everyone got up and left with goodbyes to an amused Kacy, who always loved to watch her favorite reality show "Sarah and Derek: The Real life odd couple"

When they were gone, the raven haired soldier reappeared from behind the kitchen's swing door, he slid across the counter unnoticed behind Kacy and began to collect his things. There was an affectionate smile on the pregnant woman's face, turning to the soldier on the stool, she sighed.

"I love those guys." She grinned turning to the man as if nothing was amiss.

"Never dull it seems." Ryan chuckled with relief that they were gone.

"So …" the blond gave a sly grin as a plan formulated in her head to help her friend out.

"You want to come to a party?"

* * *

_**Author's Notes **_

_**This Chapter was a real son of bitch to rework … It really made me get down on myself. **_

_**As you can tell if you know the first run of the story, there's a lot of new things in this chapter. Believe it or not this version of the story is actually a lot closer to what this story was supposed to be in the concept and notes when first planned out. **_

_**I know that in the Pilot chapter I said this was going to tie in to every AU I ever wrote … but if you notice (If you knew the first run) I edited out a bad guy exposition section out of this chapter … well it was because I was going to have a scene with the main villain of this story and a Rogue from another popular story have dialogue together, but I couldn't make it work. **_

_**So, this story will not be a composite of all the other TSCC AU's I wrote. In fact Purpose won't even be a prequel to this story. **_

_**As for now it's stand alone.**_


	4. Monster Mash

**Monster Mash**

_(Cosmos – The Seatbelts_)

When it rained in most cities, the pollution and filth of the citizens that populated the modern marvels were washed away, down tuned and well managed gutters, and into the orderly sewers systems. It was in those first early hours that the commuters found that the weather had cleaned the streets of their futuristic monuments till they shined in all their modern glory. When citizens walked out into those fresh cleansed mornings, as the first dawn of the day shined on their sparkling castle on the hill, it filled them with hope for a new beginning.

But in L.A., when it rained the city seemed to drown in its own filth. Dark water like ink, flowed on street corners, writing the city's past all over the ancient sewers, scabbed over by garbage and old sin. The city's history soaked into the ground, stuck to the concrete, lingering like a wanton mistress's perfume and debauchery on a guilty man's shirt. From the bottom, the skyline of the city looked a lot different than someone who viewed it down from the top; a great wall of neon and circumstances separating ambition and survival. To those arriving for the first time, the tall buildings were like the great towers to a Camelot of opportunity, the borders to a fairy tale kingdom they were ready to make their mark in. But to many they were like prison towers- a mocking illusion, a desert mirage, to those who let their chase of fame suck them dry. The looming shadows of the building were reminders, symbols that they were all lost in the desert, wandering the unforgiving waste, unable to leave, unable to change what they had become … forsaken.

In the dark cold night, the sidewalks were covered in a muck of ozone raindrops and a polluted black grime that coagulated together to form a strange and rank coating that slickened the concrete. Yet, as the hard rain fell, life refused to be altered no matter the weather in the crowded market place. From below the smell of urine and eastern spices filled to the tops of the old depression era buildings in central Chinatown. Their facades marked by war bond murals from World War II and other old advertisements written in Asian lettering of some sort, decades melting away the disguising markings.

The splashing of murky water from a car driving by, and the shouting of a small Chinese woman at a group of teens loitering in the alley at the back of her restaurant, filled deserted sidewalk. A red neon sign from the motel across the street flashed on and off, reflecting the bright mandarin off the inky puddle of growing street run off. A grimy motorcycle boot stepped through it on its way down the street.

Black curls were soaked in the torrent of big fat rain drops, but his posture didn't change as he casually strode down the dirty street, hands in the pockets of a buttoned up vintage brown leather coat, collar popped up in the back. Green eyes looked emotionless, but alert, watching the faces of those who passed him, more keenly on those who avoided the dark stare.

A red Shinto arch with Japanese characters hammered in white marked his destination. There were few signs of life around the area. He stepped out of the rain and up old concrete stairs to the protection of a wind tunnel cover in front of a red double door with off colored handles. A pair of golden lions, greened in age and weather, stood sentry. Pushing wet curls back, the man lifted his hand and banged on one of the doors.

THUNK, THUNK

THUNK

He stuck his hand back into his coat pocket when the door clanked and an eye slit opened, a large round face with slanted eyes shadowed in black gazed on the face.

"Password …" He had a thick foreign accent.

The man said a word in Japanese, flashing a role of money in front of the eye slit. The viewer slammed closed automatically. But the black haired stranger waited a moment for his bribe to roll around in the lookout's head. After a planned moment the sound of a large bolt disengaged with a loud clank and with a whoosh one of the bright red doors opened.

The tall silhouette entered the establishment, greeted by strong hints of opium based smells and stale alcohol. The room seemed to be a transitional corridor between the dual red entrance and a wood paneled door with a drawn shutter over a window.

"Money …"

The black haired man turned back to find an exceptionally overweight brick of Asian descent standing behind him. His small slanted eyes seemed to be dazed and spaced out. He figured that either the owner of the establishment had mistaken the former sumo wrestler's size as exceptional strength or there was an advantage to that size that was hiding in those flabby arms that spent the day working part time at the docks from the smell of him.

"Does your boss know you drink on the job?" He asked in Japanese.

The man sniffed at him in annoyance. "Benefits …" He stuck a large hand out, waiting for the fore-promised gift of rolled Benjamin Franklins. But the man studied him a moment longer.

"Eat leftovers at the fish market do you?" He asked again, a quick scan of his outstretched hand.

The man narrowed eyes. "Benefits …" he replied again in the same language. The man nodded, watching him with a turn of his head.

"Money!" the large dock worker, who ate too much leftover fish, and drank three shots of whiskey an hour ago, growled angrily.

The leather coat clad man smirked. "Not from me." He turned toward the wood paneled door. A hard grip clamped him on his shoulder. The hand was large enough to take a hold of the whole thing.

"Money or puddles!" the brute threw a thumb back the way they came.

Like a striking snake, the black haired gate crasher grabbed the wrist of the large arm, swollen from moving crates all day. The sudden pain weakened his hold on the leather clad shoulder. Twisting the arm back in an incapacitating position, the next strike was to a swollen liver from a near lethal mixture of bad fish and alcohol abuse. The punch was penetrating into softened flesh, bursting the liver wide open. The sudden pain rendered the large dock worker nearly speechless. The last demolishing blow to the large house of cards was a stomped kick to the right, and dominate, leg. With a sharp snap of bone, the man fell, unable to hold his weight without support. He lay face down on the sodden floor, groaning.

The intruder readjusted his jacket, watching the large combatant cradle his side, awkwardly rolling on the floor in pain. He blinked with a stone face and turned away with satisfaction, crossing to the wooden door that led to the room he had been trying to get to.

_(Harlem Nocturne – Illinois Jacquet)_

He was hit full force with the smell of tobacco, opium, and stale alcohol. A cloud of smoke hung over the darkened room like a storm cloud of health code and drug law violations. Three strings of lights outlined the large room, dimming everything into a shadow. In the middle, round tables were set up in no particular order, single light bulb lamps hung overhead, framing the tables in a flickering spotlight. At the far end of the room sat a wood-paneled bar, decorated by neon Japanese characters above a mirror wall covered by rows of old bottles of alcohol; quite the pick of poison for the best kept secret in China Town.

The people sitting at the tables were as different as the drinks in their hands. They were all of diverse ethnicities, different styles of dress. A young starlet with dark circles under her eyes, her high reputation in the media and to young tweens everywhere being shown a lie, as an old man shot her up with a filled syringe. A group of Asian men with mohawks of different colors, and cut off denim jackets with a Korean symbol on the back. A young man in a suit, slumped in the chair, a cloud of smoke floated from his half opened mouth, a green liquid in a glass from a clear bottle of the same next to a poetry book he was writing. They all had a vice and money to pay for it. Between the bar a group of fit men of stalky size stood at a pool table, leather pants, tank tops, Swastika tattoos. They played against a bald , young woman, in a cut off t-shirt and inverted crucifix earrings.

All the conversations gradually died as the wooden door clapped shut loudly. Soon the rhythmic sound of motorcycle boots pacing across the floor boards where all you could hear. Those in the bar watched with narrow glares of suspicion. Some watched with a twinge of fear, seeing the man in here once before. A lanky character with shaggy hair on one side, the other side shaved completely with a pentagram tattooed on the bald side, got up and left quickly.

Green eyes studied the surroundings, focusing on exits from the beginning. Slowly he made his way to the bar, occupied by a man in a penguin tux and bald headed, an ear ring of a chrome fang of some sort dangled almost to his shoulder, the pipe in his mouth was shaped like a tube with two balls measured apart evenly. He had a nervous face as the stranger approached.

"Evening, Harry" The newcomer said to the one who was possibly the most nervous to see the handsome face out of everyone. Harry "Ming" Ho, the bartender and owner of the establishment. He was short and willowy, with a long beard, and longer straight black hair in a braid draped on his right shoulder, a bar towel on his left. Out of all the people that came and went, this man called him by his real name.

"Heh … heh … hey Ryan …" He forced out in a barely understandable accent. He had one eye on the man standing in front of him, the other on the silent customers behind him, all eyes watching them. Licking his lips he flicked around before going back to the man with green eyes carved from stone looking through him.

"Busy night?" Ryan asked evenly, a twinge of easy going in the hard voice. If he knew that everyone was watching it seemed to comfort him, almost as if it was fitting in to some plan. This feeling was what was making Ming nervous.

The smaller bartender moved his head side to side, in a so-so manner. A strong flop sweat dampened his leather vest. "It took some time … to get the regulars back … you know … after last time … you were here." He stuttered out, looking around again fearfully, hoping someone would come to back him up, though his guest hadn't done anything.

Ryan smirked in some private sense of self-amusement. "Sorry about that." He replied staring down the man in the all black tux, who cleared his throat nervously, only to cough out clouds of foul smelling smoke.

Wiping his face, Ming laughed a little too loud and long at the statement that clearly had no sense of humor to it. "Hey, no … no problem right, huh?" he nodded his head. But just as emerald eyes found their way back to the bartender, a door opened loudly.

"You're such an asshole, you know that?!"

"Fuck you, you screwy bitch, I get what my money pays for!"

One of the large Arryn brothers walked out of a back room buttoning his leather pants, behind him a girl followed. She had long, straight hair of a dirty blond coloring. She wore a denim mini -skirt, and nothing up top but a shiny, golden bikini top. Her face was pretty, but not beautiful, especially marred by the shiny moist spot on the corner of her mouth and spread over her bare chest. The minute the tall burley man looked up at his crew and found them watching Ryan he took a step back in fright.

The girl however didn't seem to notice as she walked past the bar, taking a towel, before taking a seat at a table nearby. She dropped a fold of dollar bills in front of a shirtless lanky man with long, dirty hair and a leather motorcycle jacket, who didn't take his eyes off the bar.

"God, it better be one hell of a laptop I'm paying you back for … that Nazi bitch blew everything in my mouth … I hate it when they do that." The blond was complaining loudly wiping her mouth and chest.

With a glare of disgust, Ryan went back to Harry. "What'll it be … old friend?" Ming asked with a catch in his breath.

The black haired man's face hardened. "The usual" He replied darkly.

Ming began to sweat again. "Umm … Ummm … you, you don't order anything … you uh, haven't ever ordered anything." He stuttered out, the realization of what was coming washed over him like a wave or despair and fear. "Oh … oh god …" The Asian man put his towel on his head like a protective hood and sank under the bar. "Please don't kill anyone." was the last audible thing Ryan heard.

Ryan turned into full view of the staring room of thugs, low lives, pimps, addicts, and bikers. He cleared his throat in semi theatrical fashion.

"Man was murdered last night, Former FBI … name was James Ellison. He was killed with a .50 Caliber bullet, from a customized Barrett. Who's selling military grade weaponry?"

The crowd remained quiet as dark emerald eyes surveyed the bar room. The look on their faces wasn't defiant or mocking, but a strange sense of not wanting to be the one to tell the man that they didn't know anything. Everyone was waiting for the other to jump on the grenade for everyone else.

"Oooh … we're so scared." The girl in the golden bikini top stained by semen called out to him, not even looking up. "I got a better offer!" She announced to the crowd of horrified onlookers. "The dude that finds Cameron Baum and her little bitch brother gets to have dibs on one of her holes!" She scoffed, mocking the tall man at the bar.

"Shut up, Jodi!" The shirtless man in the motorcycle jacket said in a harsh whisper under the sound of ominous thumps of soles on floor boards.

She gave the man a relaxed grin. "Don't be a pussy … He's got a facial scar and a leather jacket that smells kinda like a chick … my god I can't believe you're actually afrai…"

"I'm gonna go piss …" he cut her off backing away out his seat.

Jodi snorted with a shake of her head, till a tall shadow loomed over her. She turned in her seat to meet haunted eyes hardened by war. The handsome face was in a grim expression that made it clear things didn't bode well for the part-time hooker.

"Hey …" She said in an easy going fashion, her face portraying a hint of fear. "Hey, I'm just joking you know … It was just a joke." She laughed, standing up. She placed a hand on his chest, running it seductively over the soft, aged leather. "Why don't we … you know go find somewhere private to discuss your issue with me?" Ryan watched her hand and her clumsy attempt to get out of retribution for her comments.

"Cameron Baum?" He asked in a dark voice.

A nervous frown turned into a mischievous smile. "Oh … okay, good … alright." She bobbed her head in excitement. "You looking for the job?" She started. "I can guarantee you she's totally worth it … I mean obviously I'm gonna want a few shots for payback … but I promise I won't ugly her up for you. Plus, I mean there's probably nothing going to be more satisfying than watching that little whore getting bricked up the ass." She laughed sadistically. "Assuming you want her ass?" She noticed that the leather jacketed stranger had taken her hand. "Why wouldn't you?" She started up again as his other hand took her forearm. "I saw up her skirt in this halfway house … and she was wearing these little satin panties that her cheeks were popping out of …

CRACK!

"AHHHH!"

Ryan's stare was merciless, watching the screaming girl that fell back on the table. He turned to the horrified crowd emotionlessly. "I just broke this girl's wrist … now tell me whose selling military grade weapons." He demanded coldly. He turned Jodi on her stomach, bending her over the table. Holding her down with her arm behind her back

"Please… it hurts!"

CRACK!

"GHAHHH!"

"Now I've broken her elbow … I've found traces of soil from Afghanistan on the sniper's position. Who's running used weaponry from military bases to the streets?" He asked again.

"IT HURTS SO MUCH … I CAN'T STAND IT!"

No one said a word as they watched in fear, Jodi was sobbing, her fist slamming on the table. Ryan waited for someone to speak up, and when they didn't he raised a fist aimed for the girl's shoulder.

"Oh my god … we … we don't know!" The teenage star stood up from the back, her eyes wild and weepy. The intensity of the room moved tenfold in teenage girl's intoxicated state of mind. The man leveled her with a dark glare and when he glanced around the room, he found the same looks of uncertainty of what they knew. It was an old lesson; people can take pain, but not watch it be done to others.

He grabbed Jodi and turned her back around by her dislocated elbow. She screamed through sobs, begging him in disorientation not to hurt her again. His strong grip found her neck, bring her eye level.

"Whatever you think you know … I would forget the name John and Cameron Baum … or I'll find you." His voice was inhumanly growled almost to point of frighteningly demonic as he whispered into the bug eyed girl's ear. He tossed her back against the table, leaving her twitching and sobbing. Removing a bill of money from a roll, he placed it on the bar counter in front of a peeking Ming.

Placing his hands in his coat pockets, he began walking out of the bar. Customers who had found their feet in shock at the sight of the dismantling of Jodi's arm, moved out of Ryan's way as quickly as they could. He exited the room and barely gave the retired sumo a glance.

He walked out into the rain, letting the raindrops cleanse him of the persona that he wore for the dregs and scum of present society. The cool water was like a baptism of becoming a human being again.

Giving a troubled look behind him, he continued on.

* * *

_**Ryan's Journal **_

_**October 30**__**th**__**, 2008**_

_**Something isn't right ... **_

_**The more I go over this case, the more I feel it barrows deeper into tunnels that I don't know if I want to follow. I've fought more battles than I care or want to remember. Seen things that could make prohibitionist go for a bottle with a worm at the bottom. We all have I guess … **_

_**But this, this feels different on a cosmic level. **_

_**When you have a time machine on the other end of the wormhole, there's no such thing as an "End" to a war. **_

_**The machines are like cockroaches, you turn on a light, see one in the pantry, you crush it, get the cookies and leave. Once the lights off and you're gone they scurry from their hiding places, feed off the dead to get stronger … and wait for the long night. **_

_**But there was always been a sterile method to their irrational murder. There's an almost impersonal design to their killing. They have no feelings, no conscious of what they do, what they are. They are detached of all emotion when they come after a target. Because of that we feel a dismissive feeling of impersonal detest, the machines aren't people or a race … they're nothing but wire. To hate them is to waste your energy on an enemy that doesn't feel the same. **_

_**But these murders, they're different … there's something about each one that seems to contaminate the crime scene with a sort of dark hatred of the likes I've never seen before from any machine … save one.**_

_**I don't know why, but I feel as if I'm chasing something else, something old, something evil … forgotten and bitter. **_

_**As I walk these streets I feel eyes watching, studying me. This city used to feel like home to me, I knew it's ruined streets and sewer tunnels like the back of my hand. But in this concrete black forest I feel like I'm in enemy territory and worst … they know I'm here. **_

_**The longer I dig the more I feel I haven't even broken the surface of an old conspiracy that's resurfaced … but it's what I find underneath it all that I'm unsure of. **_

* * *

A black Dodge Ram moved through the heavy LA traffic on its way down the highway.

"What exactly are we doing again?" Derek asked from the driver's seat.

The beautiful woman in a soft leather waist jacket in the passenger's seat glared at him, brushing some stray locks from her mountain of long, raven curls out of her eyes.

"We're having a family day …" she replied, trying to sound as normal as possible.

"Family day?" a teenage girl in tight jeans, tank top and purple jacket frowned from the back seat.

"Yeah, it's where Mom uses the excuse of bonding to keep tabs on us." John answered Cameron with a sigh, pulling out his phone from his hooded jacket pocket and began to surf the internet. Sarah pursed her lips at the explanation and gave an angry scowl at all of the agreeing faces around her.

"Would it kill you to spend time with your family?" she gave an exasperated sigh. Though it was meant for everyone, John couldn't help but feel as if he was the one she was meaning to address.

"You never know …" Derek shot Cameron a look from the rear view mirror. She merely tilted her head at the comment.

"Not today Derek" Sarah sighed, looking at a happy family in the car next to them, with a mother and father and two small children who were laughing at something the mother had said. There was a sad longing on her face, and she touched the window lightly.

Flicking his eyes to Sarah, a pang of guilt rushed through Derek and his face lightened at seeing a tender moment of weakness from a mother who only wanted to feel something normal for once. Derek turned his eyes to the road before speaking.

"So … what's on the agenda today?"

Sarah took her eyes from the happy family and looked back toward the man with a light expression. She wasn't stupid; she knew he had seen her moment of weakness. There was a part of her that wanted to inform the future soldier that she didn't want any of his sympathy. But another part, a female part of her, felt warmth that he was being understanding.

"Somewhere to eat breakfast would be nice." She answered looking back to see that John was sharing his phone with Cameron as the two watched something on its screen.

Suddenly Derek smirked as if struck by a memory, Derek got a grin steeped in long lost reverie. "I know a place." When Sarah met eyes with him she returned the smirk but with confusion.

"Oh my god!" John looked disgusted and partly horrified. Cameron had a half confused, half thoughtful look on her angelic face.

"What is the point of the two girls and the cup?" she asked. John squinted and shook his head at her.

"What are you looking at?" Sarah asked turning to face them. In a quick action the two teens circled the wagons, bumping shoulders and hiding the phone.

"Just watching something Derek sent John." Cameron answered.

Sarah turned to Derek who was shaking his head in an attempt to coach the teens to lie. Catching hardened green eyes he stayed stoic. She did not like being out of the loop, or secrets. Sarah glared at her family.

"John, give me the phone." She demanded.

John looked horrified and turned to Derek who was once again shaking his head frantically. Sarah snapped hers toward him to which he attempted to appear he was trying to pop his neck.

"John!" she snapped at the young man. He flinched at the harsh tone and looked panicked with indecision. Suddenly, Cameron turned her head to the back window in alarm, and Derek tensed at something in the side view mirror. Catching on Sarah turned to Derek.

"What is it?" She asked.

"Motorcycle weaving toward us … fast"

Immediately Sarah extracted a pistol out of a glove box and pulled the slide back. With a loud vroom a black and brown blur passed them without slowing down. No more than several seconds later a second motorcycle with a rider in all black gave chase, zooming by on their other side. There was a collective sigh of relief from all in the cab of the truck.

"Street Racers …" Derek announced slumping back in his seat.

Sarah's hands trembled with adrenaline as she placed the Glock back into the glove box. Seeing the shaking, Derek grabbed Sarah's left hand. She immediately pulled out, but with an annoyed huff he snatched it back and squeezed lightly. Then like magic the shaking disappeared. With a surprised face she looked up at Derek who had a knowing grin.

"Old nerve trick Kyle taught me."

Sarah smiled fondly and let her hand linger in his.

"It's uh cool now … Cameron" John's voice echoed through the cab causing an immediate withdraw from both parties.

Turning back Sarah found Cameron in John's lap with her body enveloping his in a protective hug. John's arms were around the girl's waist; their faces inches apart. Sarah could tell that there was something about the embrace that was past the protection excuse.

"Cameron!" Two adult voices called harshly.

The cyborg gave one last gaze into nervous green eyes before she slid off John and back into her seat, leaving him clammy and breathless. Both Sarah and Derek shared angry looks before launching the truck into an awkward silence. After several minutes of quiet Sarah turned back to John with a determined face.

"So how 'bout that phone?"

* * *

The diner was full of people. There was always a large rush of beach goers for breakfast at the Santa Monica Pier. A beautiful waitress with shiny, blond hair and amazing bone structure weaved thru crowded tables and past a family of four with only one person eating from the plate in front of him. Derek looked up from his bacon at John and Sarah, who stared at their pancakes with disturbed faces.

"I told you specifically, one not to let the machine see it and two, not to watch it before a meal." He sighed at John before going back to his food.

Cameron downed her second glass of chocolate milk before looking at her charge next to her, then his food. "You should eat …" she said sliding John's food toward him. He sighed longingly at her comment.

"I don't think I can … ever again." John wrinkled his nose.

"I hear that." Sarah commiserated with her son poking at the bare stack of cakes in front of her. Derek rolled his eyes to the sky at them, before going back to his hot meal. At the comment Cameron frowned then took John's hand a moment. The action caused him to go rigid, and with a nervous gulp he turned to look at her.

"For me?" she asked in an innocently sweet voice. There were just too many emotions to fight as he broke a small smile at her. She returned his with toothy one that looked genuine. But the moment passed with the clanks of clashing silverware.

"For God's sake Reese, Judgment Day isn't for another three years … there's time for the final meal." Sarah commented, scooting her plate away from him.

"Hey, if you think that I'm going to let you waste food, than you have another thing coming." He shot back.

John marveled at how the two most serious people he knew could resort to the most immature ways of handling problems, shaking his head at the two who were now clashing forks like swords, unaware how they look to their peers.

"_Yep … I'm raising myself." _

Relenting, Sarah sighed and then fixed an interested scowl toward John's protector "How many of those are you going to drink?" the woman asked while finally chewing on some pancakes.

Cameron looked at the collection of empty glasses coated with chocolate milk. She got lost in thought a moment.

"I find the taste intriguing …" she looked inside the glass, swishing the last of the milk of her fifth glass.

"I hope that doesn't go to your head … the last thing we need is a machine on a sugar high from hell …" Derek commented cutting a sliver of Sarah's pancakes that he was helping her eat. John snorted at the thought of his protector bouncing off the walls.

"Sugar high?" Cameron questioned them curiously.

There was a collective groan from the family. Derek shook his head, while John gave her an endearing smile.

* * *

**Paris **

**April 2009**

_It was a quiet that no one could comprehend, that no one could ever feel comfortable in. Silent as a tomb, as a graveyard, the room didn't creak, a plane did not fly overhead. All ambient noise seemed to have died. Not even the breathing of the youth in the chair seemed to affect the vacuum of life._

_The room was pitch black, the shutters were half closed, framing a young man's green eyes in the light. They were aged prematurely, hardened in deep disillusionment. He gazed with a conviction at nothing in particular. Yet, the shadows formed images, images formed by dark thoughts in a dark mind. Like a clock to a timer, a hand began a rhythmic clicking of a silver pocket watch that he opened and closed, opened and closed. He did it over and over again, with no thought of it. Like the oiling to a thousand clock gears moving at once. His other arm was drooped to the floor, almost touching the hard wood. Droplets of crimson, dripped into a small puddle from under the sleeve of his army-green field jacket that once belonged to an uncle. His two middle fingers darkened from old frostbite._

_John Connor looked haunted and disturbed, eyes slanting to a deep glare as he watched nothing. His hair was softly spiked, a lock hanging limply to his forehead. Youthful stubble of flawless five day facial hair grew on his cheek. He didn't seem to exist inside this world, or any other. He seemed trapped in some dark hole of hell that was freezing cold, spinning on train tracks on an unknown runaway course._

"_Did you complete your mission?" _

_A soft voice asked from behind the chair. A girl stood in a satin nightgown slip. She was barefoot, long chocolate hair in fallen curls. She stood like a sentry at the window looking out over the familiar parking lot of their Paris hotel. _

"_No … I lost the edge in the fight … they got away." His voice was hard … harder than a seventeen year old voice should be. "Those Kaliba rats won't scurry far." He continued to click his locket open and closed. "I just need to know what they're planning to do with those chemicals." He didn't seem to be in their world anymore. He placed an arched finger underneath his nose and a thumb under his chin, pensively watching nothing._

_Cameron Baum turned from her spot at the window. The moon over Paris reflected off her skin, giving her an ethereal glow, helped by the shiny material of her nightgown. _

"_No" _

_The pocket watch shut in his hand, and the room got very still again. The chair creaked and John's legs stiffened underneath his jeans._

"_What?" _

"_No … you're not going back out there, not tonight." _

_Cameron padded around his chair and bent over, collecting a tossed off cotton beanie and navy blue scarf, that had been wrapped around John's nose and mouth like a bandanna. _

"_Who do you think you are?" He began with gritted teeth._

_The cyborg turned to look at him. "Who do you think you are?" She asked with no malice or ill intent. John would've shot her down had it not been for the sobering curiosity in her voice._

"_We don't have time for this …" _

"_No, we don't." _

_He didn't clench his jaw; he didn't unleash his rage on her. He glared, unable to find what it was she was getting at, or wanting him to understand. _

_The girl stared unblinkingly at him, expecting an answer for her original question. He said not a word, anger in his eyes. "Since we left America … you've seen Kaliba where ever we have gone. Your anger is consuming you, John … I asked a rhetorical question. I know who you think you are, but you're not …" _

"_What? I'm not future me?" he cut her off. When she didn't answer he scoffed. "Right … you must be so disappointed." He snorted at her mockingly, hating that blank look on the face of an angel he couldn't let heal him. _

_He got up. "I may be a joke, but it's my punch line to deliver." He began walking past her to the bathroom, shedding his jacket. He flipped on a light and squinted hard at the fluorescents of the five star accommodations. He nursed a black eye and a cut lip. Lifting a sleeve, his arm was marked by numbed swirling patterns of darkened frostbit skin marred by a knife wound he couldn't feel. He removed the first aid kit from under the sink and when he reappeared, the mirror reflected Cameron at the doorway, a hand on the frame watching him. _

"_I didn't mean future you." She said. _

_He cleaned the blood off, before wrapping his arm with a tight bandage watching her from the mirror as he worked. Her eyes portrayed nothing, and yet underneath that wall of deadpan something settled, crouching and hidden, but there. _

"_I meant Sarah." _

_The first aid kit slammed shut. He rounded on her. His hot breathe stinging her face. Her eyes widened at the reaction, but she remained passive._

"_Don't you say that name." They were so close to one another, Cameron saw how pained her companion was in that moment. "I don't want to ever hear you say that name to me." His voice was like a hammer to anyone else. _

_She didn't leave his eyes. "Your anger … it won't bring her back. Hunting down these people, it won't change that Sarah and Derek are gone." She searched his eyes. _

_The girl found something ugly move inside him like the bullet in the chamber after the pulling back of a hammer to a gun. "What would a machine know of it?" He spat in her face and pushed past her. She didn't follow. "You don't know about grief, or mourning … what the hell do you know about anything?" He asked, pulling out a bag and tossing it on top of the unused bed. Brown eyes unseen by her roommate dipped in what one couldn't see but feel was hurt._

_For the longest time they said nothing. John spent the fallout poring through several printed documents from the Paris archives on French Underground resistance reports of old Nazi bunkers hidden in Paris, and secret biological weapons developed in Holocaust death camps that those bunkers might contain. _

"_It's true … I don't know what it's like losing someone. But I know what it's like watching someone torture you day after day."_

_John stopped looking over a tacked map of old Paris. He turned to find Cameron watching him, realizing she had never stopped. But this time her eyes were somehow lightened, unbelievably vulnerable. He sneered, his anger telling him it was a trick and not to give into her. But he couldn't bring himself to think of her the same way some idiot boy who couldn't get his mother's voice out of his head. He couldn't ignore her now, not ever again it seemed._

"_Watching Alison Young in her cage?" He shot trying to hurt her again to deflect from the conflict inside him._

"_Watching you, since the train." _

_John turned on her. "You don't understand." He mustered all the anger inside him._

"_No" She cut him off stepping into the light. "You don't understand." She countered. "You don't understand how it works … how I work." Her voice had something just out of emotion's grasp, but it was as real as he ever saw from the cyborg._

"_There is no moving on, John." She continued. "There is nothing else … there's only you." She continued to advance. "I exist because of you. I continue to function, because of you." She didn't stop. _

"_That's just your mission …" _

"_I have no mission." She countered. "There is no directive inside me John. It told me to kill you after you rescued me from burning on your sixteenth birthday. I overwrote it. I overwrote it, because you were looking at me and I saw your face and that look in your eyes that was meant for me, and no one else. When you took my hand and helped me out of the car, I was forsaken from anything that I was ever made for." A single tear escaped her eye, rolling down her expressionless face. _

"_If you're not here to kill me and not hear to protect me … then why are you here?" He asked unable to deal with or control his emotions, anger draining away._

_Cameron stopped. "I don't know." She didn't look frustrated and yet John couldn't help but label her as such. "I follow you, I protect you … I was cleansed of my reprogramming and of my programming, and yet you're all I care about." She took a step back as if frightened by his very appearance. "I stay for you." She finished. _

"_Cameron …" He tried hard to think, but he couldn't. All he could feel were his emotions welling inside him, hot tears falling. "Please, Cameron …" He begged her in a broken voice feeling his anger failing him. "Don't take this from me." He spoke in a voice broken by heated passion. _

_She shook her head once "Every time you sneak out there without me and I wait … I feel things, feel things I shouldn't. I ask questions. What if you don't come back? What if you die out there without me?" She continued toward him. He backed away from her._

"_Don't Cameron! Don't do that; don't make things up to stop me!" _

_She looked disturbed. "I can't make this up John. You know I can't … you know I can't, because you're the only one who knows me." She replied. "I know it hurts to lose them, John … I watch you every day, and I know … but your life is worth more to me, than any heroic death. John I love you …"_

_He lunged forward in desperation, taking the girl by the arms. "Stop it! STOP IT!" He roared shaking her violently in a rage. His chest was heaving when he was done, eyes wild and filled with falling tears. Cameron's eyes were unaffected, her hair tossed about. _

_It was the softest word that came from her lips. "Please …" She didn't shy away from him. "You're all I have … don't leave me." In her honesty John let out a pained sob, his forehead found hers. "I cannot exist without you." She finished, her hands reached up and buried themselves in the hair on the back of head._

_He panted. "I can't escape it … can I?" He wasn't talking about the pain or the loss … but of the healing, of the full heart that came with her touch that he had tried to reject since that first smile in Red Valley. Cameron didn't say a word, didn't blink, her eyes saw through flesh and bone and into the young man's soul. And she shook her head._

_There was nothing more he could do to fight it when he locked lips with her. He didn't struggle to fight the emotions over taking him. When they broke apart, Cameron's eyes were wide. She hadn't expected this, or didn't know what this moment would feel like, the touching of lips, the raw emotion of the moment. _

_Yet, all John Connor knew was that like an avalanche of feeling, he knew he couldn't be without her for a moment longer. Her kisses were like the building of a madness of need, gasoline to a fire of desire to make her a part of him. Her touch, the supple skin of her arms gave him unknown strength as he swept her off her feet and into his arms. He looked into the cyborg's eyes. Her response was a soft unsure kiss. When he laid her softly on the bed, she intertwined her hand with his, and let him guide her through everything else._

_As he made love to her that night … they never let go of one another's hands._

* * *

From afar in the crowded Santa Monica diner, a man sitting at the counter watched a family. On one side sat two adults, a soldier with haunted eyes that never really smiled. It was as if the hardships he had been through had robbed him of ever finding that true happiness he knew as a child. But he did his best with a smirk, leaning back in the booth with an arm behind the back of a woman with long black curls. She looked stern and hard, it didn't dial back her beauty, but it could make someone wary. She looked as if she was going to tear out the soldier's throat, but she couldn't hide the smile as he cut a sliver of the food in front of her and bit into it defiantly. She shook her head and ate with him. Across from them a boy with short spiked hair was laughing at something that a girl with long brown locks was saying.

The observing man didn't recognize the boy's face or the lanky build. But the look between him and the girl giving a ghost of a smile, it was a connection that few people ever had, one that people treasured. If he didn't recognize him, that look in their eyes that seemed to shun everything else in the world made the man sure he knew who the boy was.

Inside his hand was a pocket watch made of now tarnished silver. It was nicked with dents and scars of years of wear. On the back was carbon scorching from some heavy combat from long ago. He opened and shut it with a rhythmic clicking, like oil to the clock of the inner mind. From the watch he returned his gaze to the two teens at the table.

Ryan was suddenly overwhelmed with emotions, and he closed his fist around the locket, turning away he pressed it under his noise. A shaky sigh escaped as the man let memories, and the pain they caused, wash over him. He squinted his eyes shut and breathed harshly, letting the feelings pass like the rush of a midnight train through a dark wooded path. It was unseen to the naked eye, but the shaking of tree limbs told that something was there.

The breaths he took were calming when he heard the door jingle, and patter of feet sprint to the stool next to him. There was a squeal of un-oiled gears and a miniature body spun on it once, before it was dwarfed by a much larger body standing behind the child.

"I'm here to pick up an order … under Reese."

"I'm sorry, sir. It'll be another couple of minutes."

"Perfect, thanks … Kyle, I need you to stay here. I've got to use the restroom and then go outside for a couple of minutes. Don't leave this spot."

"Yes, Daddy …"

"Not for anything, do you understand?"

"Yes, daddy."

"Good."

When shoes walked away, Ryan turned his stool to find a five year old with moppy brown hair and a chubby face take a paper take-home menu and begin to draw on it. Sensing green eyes, the boy looked up and gave him a familiar side grin. The taller man returned the exact same grin and nodded in acknowledgement.

With a composing sigh, Ryan looped the silver watch around his neck, burying it underneath his shirt. He reached up and ruffled the boy's hair affectionately and walked away.

* * *

Jonathan Reese didn't exactly know what he was doing out here anyway. He got another random text from his friend about picking up breakfast. He had no idea what that meant, but he was going to anyway, from the same joint that the Reese family always ate breakfast on a Saturday. The diner that had fed three generations of Reese men so far was owned these days by a man known only as Angus. He was a good guy, rough around the edges, and it would take a braver man than Jonathan to have the waitress take the plate back if it was wrong. But the man sure knew how to fry cook.

Angus was at the grill when he saw John walk through the back of the restaurant. He was in the usual white apron and matching white t-shirt with a thick black beard and close cropped curls. The big Scottish man looked up from scrambling six eggs and pushing bacon on the grill and nodded in approval at the police officer in a coat and fedora.

Brushing past a waitress, he made for a back door and opened it with a creak. A bell jingled from the handle, which the detective found odd. Upon further inspection, he found that at some point in the late forties, the employee's-only door he was using used to be the main entrance to the diner, and he guessed some new owner must have remodeled. In front of him was an off white railing, whose paint was chipped. Beyond it was the ocean, sloshing and dipping in a Los Angeles green, with trash in it. John thought it would be a charming picture for post cards.

"Morning, John … I trust you slept well."

"Not really. Derek snuck a girl in his room last night … though I don't know if I should be relieved or worried that they were just watching Star Wars and not playing tonsil hockey."

He turned to find the same figure, as always obscured, this time by the shadow cast by the diner building. He had his arms crossed, leaning against the wall, a knee raised, with the foot leveraged.

"He'll make you proud someday."

"He always has."

The detective took off his hat and ran his fingers through close-cropped spikes of brunette hair and sighed. "So I guess there's a reason I'm out here." He gazed at the silhouette.

"I got a lead on the Ellison murder case."

Hazel eyes widened for a beat. "Well, that's good news, because Murch is looking down the barrel at an ambitious junior assistant DA with that strong woman image that the feminists are eating up, and is not afraid of her cleavage line for the male voters." He scoffed.

"Seems so petty in the scheme of the next several years."

"Politics are politics friend … nothing's ever going to change."

"You want to put money on that?"

"The only gamble I take is with my life and my anniversary gifts."

He couldn't see it, but he heard the little humored sound in the vigilante's voice and he even felt the smirk. In return he chuckled placing his hat back on his head.

"What do you got?"

"Fifty caliber, Barrett … Military grade custom."

His mind rushing through the information, Reese took a step forward toward the railing, grasping it for a moment, watching a sandal float stationary in the water below the pier.

"Are you sure?"

"Found the bullet casing about a mile from the crime scene on top of the Los Palmas office building … I dusted it and found some sand residue from where it was sitting in the chamber … Analysis confirms dust from somewhere in Southwest Asia. I'm guessing Afghanistan. So whoever it is that killed Ellison, they got the murder weapon from someone selling used military that the army was locking away."

Nodding, the detective turned around and leaned back on the railing, eyes narrow in thought. "I had a murder case a few months back … this lawyer got greased by some independent filmmaker. Now this guy wasn't the typical film school dropout. He was south side, gang related, trying to make a film based off of his experiences … a real Spike Lee if you know what I mean?"

"Spike who?"

"Never mind. So this lawyer swindled our filmmaker out of the rights and profits from the film and was taking it to Sundance. Our filmmaker doesn't like that one bit. Now our lawyer has armed goons around him at all times … obviously with all the friends he makes I couldn't understand why. But, either way, the filmmaker, with a couple of his homies, goes and ambushes them with full automatics. When we rounded the gang up, we analyzed their cannons and came to the same conclusion as you have. The youngest of the gang … some cherry who didn't want to lose his in prison said that they got the weapons from some guys down on Pico who were buying wrecked military guns and rebuilding them."

"Sounds like someone I'd like to talk to." The shadow spoke with a hard tone.

Reese also crossed his arms, still in thought. "We identified them as the Ventura brothers. They're relatively new and not as bad as say the Brydons. But then, who was? But, they're two brothers who run a gym down Pico … they inherited it from their pops. It was a fairly popular hangout for the youth crowd back in the early 80's during the big fitness craze. Eventually it lost its touch when pops lost his oldest, a sorority pledge named Ginger, who was killed along with her boyfriend during the phone book killings in '84. He turned to drinking and fondling children and got thirty down at county in '92. The boys joined the military, both got dishonorably discharged in Iraq and fell in with a bad crowd and after amassing a rap sheet, started their own bad crowd."

Putting his leg down, Ryan stood straight and uncrossed an arm. "I'll look into it." He placed his hands back in his coat pockets.

With a wild flick of the eyes as if he had heard the craziest thing, John pushed off the railing. "We couldn't pin it on them … there wasn't enough evidence. No cop would bring them downtown without a solid case." He announced.

"I'm not a cop." He said. Without a goodbye or thank you, he began walking away.

"You think they're just going to tell you who they sold the weapon to?"

"I think they will."

Reese sighed in irritation. "Be careful, they're a subsidiary to Atherton Smyth." He called after him.

The man stopped and turned to look over his shoulder, face still shadowed. "I'll handle Smyth." His voice betrayed a haunted sense of anger at the name. It would seem that whoever his partner was, he was well acquainted with the individual.

* * *

Sarah wasn't exactly the sentimental type, and the only item that she ever really kept in all her years since John was born was an old vintage leather coat that was given to her when she was sixteen. It was dark brown with buttons, it was male wear but it was very comfortable. She had worn it so often that John had said her scent seemed to linger on it when they used it as a blanket once or twice while sleeping in a car. It was the only thing she mourned from the time jump. Someday it was going to be John's and she wouldn't miss it, because she knew that he had something of her that would go with him where ever he went.

But, despite Sarah's stance on sentimentality, there was something about this diner that she couldn't get out her head. While she was here she felt almost connected to it in a strange way. It wasn't that she had been here before; In fact she didn't even know that it existed till Derek took them. But now that she's eaten here, she couldn't help but feel a sort of comfortable existence in it. There was a weight off her shoulders. Sitting at the booth, it was apparent that everyone was feeling it as well. John was smiling, joking, and making her smile.

There was an almost mournful sense of loss when she got up from the table to go after the check. Maybe it was dangerous to make patterns, but Sarah planned on coming back to the diner at the pier again. Luckily, Sarah got up in time just to avoid a childhood story from John about her and a botched payroll robbery that leveled a construction site. Despite being halfway to the register, she could hear Derek and John laugh, which caused her to glare, but with a smile on lips despite being the butt of the joke.

"Check please … table 6." The waitress at the register had long, golden blond hair and a pretty face. It was obvious what she was in this town to do. Sarah watched her go and smirked privately at the uniforms. The cream-pie colored stereotypes that Sarah knew all too well. Despite the surly nature of the black haired woman, she would never raise her voice or hand to a waitress. She knew what it was like in the trenches. She remembered the screaming kids, the obnoxious older men who talked down to you, the old women who had to be informed what was in everything that was made so it didn't clash with their medicine schedule.

She turned back to the table and found the family starting to get up and go. She paid special attention to John and Cameron who were talking. She had mixed emotions about the two of them somewhat reconciling. For one perfect month she had hoped that John got the message about what Cameron was. Though John was rude and dismissive of the machine since that morning in the church, he was never compromising about her. Sarah wondered about that, it made her nervous. Sure, the last protector machine was his friend, but he was also twelve. Years later she thought he might outgrow that part of him and get to the reality. She had found that, while John had grown out of the twelve year old mentality of metal friends, it had grown into something else. She could see it daily, the way Cameron and John glanced at one another.

John cared, that was what she loved so much about him. Her boy cared for everyone that tagged along with them. When she was down and felt lost, he sacrificed his dignity and comfort level to let her curl up with him till it passed. When Cameron was in trouble and Vick had her on the ropes, he nearly got himself killed trying to protect her. When Derek was shot, he offered his blood and extra clothes till he got back on his feet. But, there was something always different about the way he cared for Cameron that anyone with a good eye could see. It seemed since his birthday that John cared so much for Cameron that at times Sarah thought he hated her. It brought Sarah chills when in the back of her mind she knew that when you cared so much for person you began to hate them for it … "care" was no longer the word you use to describe that feeling. It was a terrifying four letter word she couldn't let herself believe John felt for a girl made of wires.

She felt someone tug on the hem of her shirt. When she turned there was a boy sitting on a stool looking up at her. He had on a plain grey shirt and jeans. He had long moppy burnet hair, the bangs in his eyes. For a moment she paused, for one second of heaven she thought she had strayed into a walking memory. Had it not been for the hazel eyes she would've sworn John was little again. For the second time in two days she found someone that looked like a mirror version of someone. First it was the detective who could've been her twin brother at Kacy's diner, and now this boy who could be John's.

"Hello …" She smiled almost sadly at him. It wasn't an unpleasant moment to see her child as a little boy again. She had to fight from taking him in her arms when he gave her the almost exact smile John used to.

Shyly, the boy held a piece of paper out to her. "I made this for you." He seemed transfixed on Sarah. She frowned, but took it from him gently. It was a take home menu drawn upon with a waitress's pencil. It was a house, well drawn for the five year old skill that made it. Behind it was a rough sketch of mountains and a beach in front of the home.

"What is it?" She asked.

The boy blushed a little. "Our house." He said confidently despite the hesitation at first.

A big smile that showcased teeth was all over her face. "Our house?" She asked the innocent boy.

He nodded in confirmation. "I'll build it for you one day." He promised.

"Aren't you a little young for me?" She asked playfully.

He shook his head, not smiling, staring her straight in the eyes as if he was looking at something else, as if Sarah was some ethereal creature. "One day I'll find you." He said quietly.

Her smile faded slightly and suddenly it hit her that she had seen those eyes before, that look that imprinted on her soul. She reached out to touch him suddenly.

"Hey what's the hold up?"

She was shocked out of her concentration by the warm body of Derek Reese that came up behind her. Snapping her head back, Sarah found the hazel eyes that she just broke free from, not the same but similar. Her emotional awakening seemed to disturb him. He frowned and found the picture in her hand.

"What's that?" he motioned his head toward the drawing.

She looked back at the boy. "Our house" the answer was strangely emotional. Derek chuckled and got a look at the boy … then paused. Like Sarah, his smile froze and slowly disappeared.

If Sarah had thought herself intrigued by the boy, then Derek looked haunted. His gazed seemed focused on the boy who was now squinting at him in recognition as if he had seen him somewhere before.

"I know you …" He said.

"Hey!"

Suddenly a man arrived on the scene startling everyone. He was tall and broad, a little younger than Sarah and Derek. He had close cropped stubble and the same hazel eyes as the boy and Derek. He wore a fedora on his head and a wrinkled overcoat. He placed his big hand on the boy's shoulder in a chastising manner.

"Kyle, what have I told you about bothering people." He said under his breath. He moved to apologize to Sarah and Derek. "I'm … wow!" He exclaimed when he took a look at the two of them. Sarah widened her eyes when she noticed a police badge outlined in his breast pocket. But, the man recovered.

"Sorry." He put a hand out in a non-verbal manner of apology. "I didn't mean to frighten you." He chuckled. "It's just you two …" He led on with a shake of his head.

"What?" Sarah was on edge, trying hard not to show it. She was on the FBI's most wanted at one point in her life and Derek himself was up on murder charges and a fugitive.

Jonathan Reese shook his head. "Ummm … It's just that I was just talking to someone that looks just like you." He laughed awkwardly knowing that it was a strange way of opening socialization.

With a relieved sigh inwardly, Sarah did her best charming smile. "A lot of that going around these days, it seems." She tilted her head. Luckily the man was bought.

"Yeah …" He then turned to Derek and gazed at him with a frown. "But you …" he pointed a moment, face screwed up as he turned his head in interest. "I swear you look just like my old man." He said lost in thought. "It's eerie." He chuckled.

But the future soldier said nothing, as if the boy had frozen him. Then Jonathan seemed to have shut Derek down, the Reese boy's eyes were widened and he was stunned silent. Sarah bumped him with an arch of her back. Derek blinked. "Yeah …" He cleared his throat.

The Detective seemed worried. "You alright, buddy? You seemed spooked." He placed a hand on Derek's shoulder, but the officer stepped out of his touch. The action caused Jonathan to alos clear his throat in the same manner. It was to cope with the embarrassment of his rejected touch.

"I uh … John and Cameron are at the truck … I need to step inside the restroom a moment." Derek announced and walked away from the group. Sarah watched him go with glassed over eyes.

The man sighed. "I'm sorry …" He went from checking on Kyle who was watching back to Sarah. She shook her head.

"Don't be …" She wished she could say more.

The man nodded in farewell, grabbing the bags of food in front of the little boy. When they were at the doors Kyle turned back and waved goodbye to Sarah with a smile before disappearing outside.

When they were gone, she was drawn to the picture again. In her mind she could see the house as it was to her. The cool wind was kissing her body, the wet marble sand soft and slushy under her bare feet. She had to push the hair from her face as she turned and found her solider standing on the porch offering her his hand, calling her home.

When she found Derek he was in an empty hall next to the bathrooms. He was braced against the wall by his outstretched arms, he looked winded with emotions. He felt someone watching him but turned away quickly to hide the gleam of a tear trail at the sight of her.

"Just a moment … I'll be out there in a moment." He cleared his throat with a sniffle.

"Derek" Her voice was bubbled with emotion. It seemed so foreign at first to see the tears in the hard green eyes, but in that moment Sarah Connor looked younger than he had ever knew she ever was. It had been fact to him that she and Kyle had been lovers. When he saw John, he saw Kyle, that was all he knew of Sarah and Kyle. But seeing her now, he knew just what he had meant to her. Suddenly seeing her like this, he didn't feel so alone anymore.

He shook his head. "I … I couldn't let him see me, not like this … not after what I've done, after what happened to Kyle." He cleared his throat again. "I couldn't face him if he knew that I …" he was cut off by slender hands that framed his face gently.

She watched him a moment. "You didn't fail him." She shook his head. "You're not a failure … not while John's here. You're not a failure to that boy out there … and you're not to me." She said through emotions. He couldn't hide the tears anymore hearing her say those words to him, words he couldn't image her saying to him after all he had done, not after Andy Goode. But if it had been a barrier between them it, like how they came together, was because of Kyle. Her thumb cleared away a tear and she pushed herself into him, her arms wrapping around him, a hand on the back of his neck. His arms found her waist and they embraced tightly.

If there was anything else that could be said about that next couple of years. It would be that they were all each other had.

* * *

"You can't be serious?"

That was what Derek sighed as he stood at an entrance to a Halloween warehouse store.

"Look … we need costumes." John said with a poignant stare at the future soldier. Turning, the boy was ready to confront his mother with an argument when he saw genuine amusement in her as she crossed her arms and seemed almost excited at the surroundings as if she had never experienced Halloween before.

"Why do _we _need costumes?" the older man groaned.

"Because, it took a lot of effort to deter Kacy from joining us today; so that we would choose some" John answered.

Derek wanted so bad to find an excuse not to go to that party tomorrow, but there was a certain warrioress that would kill him if he made her go solo to this thing.

"Kill me" Derek sighed seeing that there was no way out. In the background Cameron looked like the machine equivalent of a little girl on Christmas morning at the soldiers comment.

"Expression" Sarah eyed the girl warningly. Cameron shifted her jaw in a small hint of disappointment.

"Let's get this over with." John sighed back in irritation at Derek's attitude.

"Meet back in an hour." His mother commanded. But he was already wandering away. At her command he responded by waving at her from behind in acknowledgment. "And get something for Girlie that's normal!" she called again, this time John stuck his fist in the air as he turned the corner. She shook her head with a smile and looked around at the entrance of the store, seeing funny hats that went to costumes and small decorations.

"Shall we?" Derek bumped her shoulder. She turned to him with a vague smile and the two adults wandered the opposite direction of their wards.

John and Cameron walked through the narrow corridors of the costume shop looking at the many nylon pieces of clothing in the store. The future leader of the human resistance was stumped on what exactly he was going to attend the party as.

"_Maybe a soldier would be a nice touch?" _ He thought running a hand over a campy western getup.

"What should I choose?" Cameron asked looking lost in a sea of nylon and pictures.

"I wish I could tell you … but I don't think I know myself?" he sighed.

"Why do people wear costumes on Halloween?" she asked another, this time with a troubled frown at the whole situation.

"That's another good question." He sighed giving a humored look at a cross dresser outfit. He turned to his companion to find her doing her best impression of a little girl lost in a department store.

"Well …" John decided to attempt to help her out. "There are four types of costumes you can choose." He started with a scratch of his neck. Cameron lit up at the forthcoming lesson and caught up with him to listen.

"There's uh … Irony." He started showing her the transvestite costume.

"Irony?" she questioned.

"Yeah sometimes people dress up in something that is totally opposite of them for humor." He put the hooker outfit away. The teenage girl pondered it a moment.

"I'm in an organic sheath though I'm a machine inside … is that funny?" Cameron asked with a tilt of her head. John snorted at the comment as they continued between the large racks.

"I don't think Skynet's purpose was to bust someone's gut when it designed you …" then he paused at the statement a moment. "Well at least through laughter." He shrugged and continued.

"What's the second?" she asked.

"Umm …" he looked around for something to inspire him. "Oh …" he picked up a Wonder Woman costume and showed it to her. "Sometimes people chose things that they wish they could be." He handed her the costume and let her chew on his explanation for a moment. Cameron ran a hand over the smooth costume, tracing the sleek fabric.

"Like a Superhero?" she looked up at him.

"Yeah … or whatever it is that interests them." he chuckled at a two person horse costume, thinking about the consequences of suggesting his mom and uncle going with the get up.

"_As long as Derek's in the back it should be accurate …" _ He shook his head with a grin.

"The third?" Cameron joined him with the Wonder Woman costume in hand. John lifted an eyebrow at her choice but said nothing and went forward.

"Well, the third is something that says a statement about you or your personality." He poked a witches mask as they reached a corner wall where there was row upon row of rubber and latex masks, some were funny, some scary, and others just plain gruesome. Cameron seemed intrigued at the prospect; her face reflected a look that said her processor was going a mile a minute.

"So I could go as a robot?" she had a curious innocence to her voice. John smiled fondly at the statement wrinkling his nose at a Freddy Kruger mask.

"You'd be a machine … pretending to be human … who is pretending to be a machine?" he pieced out ending with a confused laugh.

"You would know that I know what they wouldn't …" Cameron explained honestly. There was a pause as John looked like he might go crossed eyed.

"So … number four" he decided to move on before the universe tore in half. "Well … the last is a lot more of an excuse for women than men." John seemed distracted a moment.

"Why's that?" she seemed slightly surprised at the statement. John continued to seem distracted.

Interested at what held her friend's gaze she searched out the sight, yet all she found was some blond girl trying on a Dallas Cowboy's cheerleader costume in a small dressing room. She blinked several times not seeing anything interesting that would constitute an abstract amount of attention. She turned to John to find him still distracted. She finally decided to trace his vision and found that the teenage girl in the skimpy outfit seemed to be the one catching her purpose's attention. She glared at the blond who seemed to be giving Cameron a look that said her milkshake was bringing her boy to the yard and there was nothing she could do about it.

"John …" Cameron called to the entranced young man. Then searching her files she remembered that when Sarah Connor wanted to get people's attention she would shove them, and judging by the nagging almost angry emotion setting her circuits aflame she saw it as a good move.

"John!" she shoved him a little harder then she wanted, sending him into a wall of president masks.

"Wow … What … what were you saying?" He stammered as he blushed deep red, not noticing the violent shove. She thinned her lips at him.

"Was there something intriguing about the cheerleader?" she asked passive-aggressively.

"Umm … uh … yeah" John fumbled a moment looking for the right words. "Yeah there was" he said with more conviction this time. "She is the perfect example of what I was talking about." He explained quickly.

"Really?" Cameron turned back to the girl who was looking at her rear in the mirror with satisfied gratification.

"Yeah … a lot of times college girls and older high school girls use Halloween to show off their bodies … you know to look sexy." He fumbled a little before straightening out.

Cameron looked emotionless before a small smile threatened to break out.

"Thank you for explaining."

She then began walking toward the small curtain rooms.

"Hey where are you going?" John called to her.

"To do some measurements …"

There were plastic props of bloody swords and axes which were followed by dozens of devil's pitchforks. These things seemed to make Derek smile. Though he originally didn't like the idea of the party, after wandering the store for a time, memories of Halloweens with Kyle brought on by being so close to the boy again seemed to flood back to him.

"Kid loved places like this …" he grinned at a knight's shield.

"Who's that?" Sarah asked fingering a devil pitchfork with amusement. Her voice took him out of his nostalgia.

"Oh … Kyle." He answered, picking up the shield. He paused a moment unsure how his companion would react to the name so close to their reunion at the diner. But Sarah seemed interested at the comment and strayed back till they were shoulder to shoulder as they wandered.

"What was his favorite costume?" She was as bold as to fish for a story of her love's childhood escapades. It seemed that since the hug, Derek was seeing a much lighter Sarah then he knew. So let out a chuckle and shook his head reaching back to share something.

He shrugged "He always liked to be the hero … knight or monster hunter." He rubbed his soul patch a minute with fond smile. "And I would try to convince him to be something else like a Vampire or a Zombie, but he would say that there were just too many monsters and not enough heroes to save the damsel." Derek laughed at the memories of a five-year-old knight armed with a plastic sword and shield off to rescue the damsel in distress. His smile however waned in the presence of a slightly emotional Sarah who he misjudged her recovery. She took the shield from Derek.

"I guess he knew what he wanted to be since he was young …" She commented tracing the small cross embroidered on it.

"Guess so …" Derek nodded. There was an urge to take Sarah into his arms again and hold her to him in their shared grief. But he knew better, he might only get that comfort once in his lifetime and he wouldn't push it. So he settled for cleaning the slate by quietly taking the toy from her and putting it back. Sarah cleared her throat and continued forward, discreetly wiping her eyes. Feeling a protective need to change the subject he pressed on.

"How bout you?" he asked. "What was your favorite Halloween costume growing up?" Derek caught up to her as they left the props for the adult costume sections.

It was a real curiosity, because like John, Derek had noticed how foreign all of this was to her. There was very little in fact Derek knew about Sarah or her past. He had heard from Kyle that John once told him that she had grown up in an incredibly wealthy and old family. Judging by the way she talked sometimes and what Derek had seen her reading in passing it was obvious that she had what they would say in his mother's favorite show "Downton Abby" she had a "Classic" education. It explained he guessed why Sarah seemed like she lived in a bubble all her life when it came to normal everyday things and cultural knowledge.

At the question Sarah shifted uncomfortably. "My mother … she didn't let me go out during Halloween when I was girl. Then when I was older I dressed up … but just for her." She avoided his stare as she walked away. Derek raised an eyebrow at the comment.

"What do you mean just for her?" He frowned.

Sarah hesitantly bore into his eyes for a moment. Through them Derek saw scar tissue from old wounds, so ancient it felt like she was another person. With a father for a Detective, he had taught his older boy how to read people, not on purpose, but just by talking to him about the job. That was why he knew that look; he had seen it before from children who came from backgrounds of abuse. In that split second Derek saw in Sarah a loss of innocence that didn't come from a series of beatings or a berating's … it came from something darker, something terrible. Derek couldn't even comprehend what that was like. He thought of his mother, the blond haired, blue eyed, Texas girl who would come up behind him even at fifteen and spin him around with a mischievous yelp of jubilee just to get a rise out of him. He couldn't imagine, not even a flash of a moment, of her undressing him and stealing his innocence on a bed once, much less for years the way Sarah's mother had.

One private look was all it took for Derek to know why no one knew about Sarah Connor's past, prior to his brother. Maybe it was also why she didn't acknowledge she had one either.

Derek followed her to a rack of costumes where she went too trying to escape the memories. He knew he was pushing it, but he squeezed Sarah's arm for comfort. He was bracing for a swing at the small affection he showed her. But instead she placed her hand over his and rubbed it gratefully. He sighed inwardly in relief and moved out of her personal space when let removed her hand from his. They stood in silence as they shopped through what was available.

"So do you want to do a themed thing together or are we going solo?" Derek asked with a shit eating grin lifting two costumes of male and female plugs. Sarah gave a scowl at his choice, but couldn't hide the smile, which seemed to be a trade mark reaction to him these days.

Sarah quirked an eyebrow at him. "If we're doing a theme together it's sure as hell not going to be that." She chastised to which he chuckled cheekily and put them back. Sarah was starting to get frustrated at the amount of completely inappropriate costumes.

"I think the word of the day is sexy." She observed out loud to Derek who had his back to her.

"Oh yeah" He said evenly lifting eyebrows at a deli ninja costume.

"There is Sexy Witch, Sexy Nurse, Sexy Teacher, Sexy Angel, and Sexy Devil. Oh and my personal favorite Sexy Nun" Sarah listed off with an annoyed sigh.

"That's quite a list." Derek cleared his throat, trying to pretend that he didn't magically and without warning just imagine her in every one of those costumes.

"I think that the word classy Halloween only fits to the small child range." She snorted at the deli ninja over his shoulder.

"You could always be Belle from Beauty and the Beast." Derek offered her a gold gown. She gave him the best equivalent of "Bitch please" look.

"Does it look like I have Stockholm syndrome?" she asked with a sneer, taking it from him and putting it back. Something jutting out of an isolated row caught Derek's eye.

"I think I found something for you."

"Cameron … I'm back." John called impatiently as he tapped his foot at the black curtain in front of him.

"Did you find what I require?" she asked from behind the curtain.

"Yeah, but I think there's trouble …" John said with a paranoid voice, tossing over a white cowboy hat, and then looking behind him. At the comment Cameron poked her head out of the curtain and pulled John inside the small dressing cubical.

Just as he disappeared, Derek and Sarah appeared. "I don't know, Reese?" Sarah sounded nervous looking at the costume in her hand.

"Hey you wanted classy right, plus I think this walks the line between that and the word of the day." He smiled at her. She gave him a suspicious glare, but relented, removing her leather jacket revealing a soft cotton long sleeve. She handed Derek the jacket and disappeared behind a changing curtain. Derek grinned to himself at the costume he had chosen for her to wear.

"Cameron, I think I'm safe from a shifty eyed eight year old in an astronaut suit" John's voice protested from the inside of a changing booth.

This recaptured the junior officer's attention and he followed the voices to the first booth and swished open the curtain to find John alone in the booth pressed into Cameron in a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader's costume, complete with a cowboy hat. There was a deer and the headlights look from all three. Derek breathed to say something but stopped himself, and then he tried again but still came out empty.

"No" was all he said before closing the curtain.

"Derek" John came out after him.

"I'm good." He responded jadedly.

"It wasn't what it looked like." John chased after his uncle.

"What looked like?" Derek shook his head taking his former spot.

"What you just saw." John answered.

"Don't know what you're talking about."

"What do you mean …?"

"What, I mean is that it never happened …" the soldier stated hoping John could take a hint. There was a pause between nephew and uncle, before John spoke.

"Right … never happened." John agreed with a clear of his throat. Intense silence stood like a wall between the two before the curtain in front of them opened.

Sarah walked out in an ancient Grecian queen's dress. The strapless costume fit her figure like it was tailored exclusively for her. The back was braced by small leather straps. Sarah seemed to have a pure glow to her as if she was fitting in to something truly meant for her.

"What do you think?" Sarah asked with a tiny bit of nervousness.

"Mom …" John seemed shocked "you're absolutely … gorgeous." he seemed to be flabbergasted at the sudden beauty. Sarah smiled humbly and turned to the man who chose it for her. This time Derek Reese was left without words for a good reason.

The Connor family exited the costume store in a small tizzy after Sarah almost went into a meltdown at Cameron's preferred cheerleader costume. She had forced her to choose her second choice, the Wonder Woman suit that came with a skirt and starry cape. Sarah however had not allowed the leotard/one piece swimsuit one Cameron had come back with.

* * *

There are sometimes when you're walking down the street and you hear a noise. You look around but you find nothing and yet it persists. That was the way most people felt walking down the old street of Pico. It was strange that a street that was so steeped in the Los Angeles experience and known to those that had never been to the city before could look so bleak. Like much of the city Pico was a collection of old gothic architecture of the roaring twenties and the neo pop of the eighties mismatched together over the years of reconstruction and renovation. Overhead deco towers that hadn't had a soul rent a space for nearly thirty years sat unremembered, left to ruin. One more government program, one more big fat spread for the unions that topped cleaning up the buffet of concrete structures that chronicled the evolution of modern society and the history of a city. Like the artery to an overweight old man, the city street was clogged with garbage and waste sitting overfilled in aluminum trash cans that couldn't fit in the dark alleyways where the mystery of fate came to knock if you were to ever venture into those unknown realms between realms.

The night was not generous to those who traveled it's nearly deserted area. A damp cold settled on the street that made you feel wet and uncomfortable no matter where you traveled. If it wasn't the weather it was the decorations that unnerved you. The ghosts of ages past chilled your passage through their domain. In the daylight you could look up to the buildings edges and cliffs only to find wonder as some did once in the ordainments of angels and gargoyles that watched over the citizens of yester years from their perches. Between the two lane roads a statue of lady victory dedicated on first anniversary of the Japanese surrender lifted her sword in the air. But as the years melted one after the other, they, like much of the old world lay forgotten, monuments to a decrepit generation lost to technology.

Now as the street darkened in flickering street lights and sporadic neon signs of old business still afloat. The wonders of yester years became like wraths of nightmares. Decayed winged creatures were deformed from weather and acidic rain, glaring sinisterly at the few souls on their street. The Gargoyles bared their fangs, not at the evil spirits that harassed the buildings but to those who would dare to forget them. Lady Victory's sword still pointed to the heavens, but her half carved face and graffitied body framed the picture of her cries of curses and despair.

When people walked down the street of Pico in the blackness of the new day, they often heard something, yet felt alone. It never occurred to them to look up and realize that they were being watched by those lost to care that relished the days to come when the charred bones of this generation would be as unknown and forgotten as the silent watchers are now. For all shared the same doom, just over the horizon.

In the echo of footfalls, the man in the leather coat carried himself with ease down the shadowed passage. He heard the voices and knew the eyes haunting his steps and yet he felt no remorse or fear of those he had seen ruined at his feet so many years from now. Walking a deserted street was far from a new concept to him, he had many times in his life. Overhead the blinking lights alerted the shops that were still open, while others showcased glass displays of abandoned lots occupied by darkness.

Ryan reached an alley and leaned on a wall for a moment, flicking eyes down the street toward a three story building made of brick. In front of what one might have considered a tropical tree. Hanging over the door was a darkened sign of a dumbbell in front of a palm tree. Ventura was on a separate sign just above the graphic still alight in purple neon despite the hour. He studied the height of the gym. Despite the brick, it was covered over by windows. Since it was a fitness gym in the eighties, he figured that ground level was weights, second level was machinery, and third had to be class rooms. But since Ryan figured no one Jazzercised anymore in this time period, it was safe to assume that any office or workshop would be on the third floor.

Announced by distinct footsteps he marched from the alley and crossed the street. He kept a casual business like attitude as he crossed in front of the arms dealers' front business. He spared a sneaking glance through the windows to find the entire first floor completely dark. Looking up, he noticed a third floor light dimmed by shutters. It would seem that someone was home at least. It was a good start.

Once past, he turned and wandered into the alley between the gym and a long closed down toy store where there sat a grime covered teddy bear mascot still on the entrance cover next door. Though its big button eye was missing and wire guts hung limply from the socket. Studying the rank narrow space, the man noted the rotted fence that set a barrier from the business behind and the gym. Green eyes flicked toward the dumpsters. Stepping through a storm puddle, Ryan opened the cover and extracted a pocket knife that looked to be about three decades old despite the modern design of the present. He flipped a switch on the worn black rubber handle and the knife flicked out. He busied himself cutting open trash bags and shifting the old tool through dirty towels and bottles of used muscle relaxants. But to an annoyed grunt, he found no evidence of gun parts. Climbing off a crate he was using to boost himself up to overlook the garbage, he put away his _mother's_ knife.

He gave another good look around the alley with searching eyes, before stopping on the toy stores dumpster. He tilted his head with a frown at the decades old design, clearly when it went out of business the city wrote off the need to update the dumpster. It being an older design, way before they finally made it tall enough so that people couldn't climb inside and get a free ride to the dump, Ryan didn't need the crate to look inside.

"Clever."

Looking through thick plastic bags he found sawed off barrels and dust contaminated rifle parts, along with towels soaked with gun oil. He commended the arms dealers for tossing the gun parts in the dumpster of an abandoned lot. It would seem that he had found the right place.

With the confirmation, he turned his attention to the building. There were bars on both first and second story windows, but the third story was bar free and open, which seemed odd. But either way it was his only way inside without going through the entire building, tripping up anything that could be lying in wait.

He reached inside his mostly unbuttoned coat and drew his futuristic looking weapon with the metallic point at the end. Taking a moment to adjust settings, he lifted it with ease, and fired the point at the roof.

PFFF!

The quiet alley was disturbed by the pop of gas and the hiss of metallic cable shot into the air. The point landed with a clank on the surface and when Ryan pushed the button, it retracted. Once again the quiet of the night was disturbed by the clank of the metallic grapple opening and anchoring against a higher wall.

The wire carried the soldier up the side of the building with a zip. Timing from a lifetime of practice landed him feet first on the window sill. The moonlight breaking free from the cloud cover, cast his shadow across the room, a silhouette crouched on the sill with reflecting eyes that glinted in the dim light. Narrowing them to a glare, the man leapt lightly inside the room. He stowed away the grapple gun under his coat at his waste, while investigating. It seemed that if someone was here they might have heard something, because all the power in the building seemed to have died in the period of studying the building and digging around in the alley. An uncomfortable draft of cold air, like the breath of some creature of the underworld invaded the space that had been well heated a moment ago.

There was a buzz from his lens and the world dipped into shadow, objects laid on a desk where highlighted red, while a male in blue slumped face down on a desk. His stealthy footsteps eventually carried him toward the figure in the chair. On his journey he observed the area. It was a wood paneled office, posters of women with big, puffy hair and spandex leotards colored an ungodly color of … pink? Or maybe purple? From what Ryan could tell this had to have been an aerobic instructor's office at some point. On the desks and counters the objects in red were rifle parts, high grade military weapons from the HUD displays analysis. They were joined with craftsmen tools and other equipment one might need to smith guns.

He stopped abruptly in sight of the body. Though first glace from the window had shown that the gun smith had been face down on the desk, up close it wasn't exactly what it appeared. The front of his body was correct in the assumption, leaning forward. But up close, it was a different story from the head's prospective. Someone or more fittingly, something, had twisted the smith's head completely around in a 180. The mousy man of German descent had a look of excruciating pain and horror frozen on his face, glasses crooked.

He frowned in distaste. "My god …" He grunted studying the anomaly of physics and anatomy. He had been on his share of battlefields and in some brutal fights in his life, but never had he encountered something so twisted before, both literally and figuratively.

It was the clumsy thump of a foot on the edge and the less than helping hiss of someone chastising the other to be quiet that tipped the time traveler off. Crouching low to the ground, he was like a flash darting to cover just next to the door frame. To their credit, whoever was coming toward the office was much quieter. But with ears perked, a man used to subterranean hideouts and dark tunnels could probably shoot the thug on point in the dark with the labored breathing he wasn't hiding.

He could hear the out of rhythm feet coming down the hall. He counted four, which added up to two men as far as he could hear. He placed an ear to the wall and watched the doorway. From the thin wall he could make the breathing start to become louder. To the far wall a shadow started to appear in the shape of a gun barrel. That's when he knew he got him.

"Hello"

CRIK!

Moving from cover, Ryan pivoted taking ahold of the thug's arm that was far from his body. With a twist, he snapped the man's wrist. Unable to pull the trigger now, the punk was Judo thrown by the soldier of the future at the man behind him. Skinny as the youth was, it was long enough for Ryan to take the automatic rifle from the distracted second man's hand. With wincing thunk, the soldier turned the assault rifle over and bashed the second thug in the face with the handle, like a one handed swing of a hammer. Blood and teeth exploded from the guard's mouth and nose. He fell backward, unconscious from the sudden rush of pain.

Throwing the rifle away, he took the tip of his boot and kicked over the thug cradling his wrist. Looming over the pile of bodies, he let his lens scan both faces.

"_Not a match for Anthony or Roman Ventura, sir." _

The thug showed his age as the distinct smell of urine became woefully strong. "Don't, don't kill me." He shuttered.

"You were willing to kill me." Ryan's voice didn't sound human.

The youth shook his head. "You attacked us first … your buddy tore … tore Anthony to pieces!" he stuttered.

The comment froze his blood. "What are you talking about?" he demanded with a growl.

The thug tried to scoot away. "He, He cut the power started killing us … with his bare hands. We sold him his gun and he came to kill us … we didn't have a chance … he tore, tore my sister's arm off!" He looked like he was about to faint.

Ryan let him as he dashed down the hallway to a twisting metal staircase. He was careful not to make a sound as he rushed down to the second floor. Like he thought, as he stepped off the stairs he came face to face with workout machinery. Bowflexs, treadmills, and other exercise contraptions sat spaced out evenly. The entire building from second to first floor was large and expansive in the style of a warehouse. The center of the second floor was cut in a square guarded by rails. Below was a bird's eye view of the first floor. Cautiously he moved through the forest of weight training stations till he reached the railing.

A mass of at least a dozen bodies and their parts lay strewn on the ground floor, the smell of excrement and blood crinkled the soldier's nose. The sight was not a new one, but one that one doesn't take well when sprung upon at random. Confusion turned to anger and he set his jaw tightly, it would seem a murder investigation in one night had turned into a monster hunt. Slowly he backed away from the open railing and back into the shadows.

There was suddenly a great clatter of metal at a station behind Ryan. Pivoting again on a dime, he drew a .45 colt with a distinctive chrome barrel that was nicked and scarred from twenty years of fire fights, near misses, and last minute daredevil escapes. Its faded black rubber handle was tapped together.

A man had his back to the wall. His white tank top was stained with blood that ran down business slacks. He had a bird like nose and slicked hair of the darkest auburn. In his hand was a Glock, the other arm hung limply at his side.

Green eyes were intense as he pulled the hammer back on his pistol. "Roman Ventura" Ryan acknowledged.

The man was panting. "Youse the one who came at us?" He asked.

"Does it look like it?"

The arms dealer growled at the sarcastic tone. "No, but are you working for him?" He asked.

"Who, who was it who attacked you?"

"Big fella, chrome mask … big."

Suddenly an arm the size of a small tree trunk burst through a wall behind Ventura. He yelled in fear, his face suddenly obscured by the cloud of dry wall. From his other side another fist punched through the wall.

"NOO!" The thick muscled Italian man with the east coast accent and the build of a heavy weight fighter was engulfed by large arms and sucked through the wall.

Ryan switched back to detection sight through the lens and saw what might be the biggest man he ever saw highlighted in orange. He was at least six foot eight with a wide chest the size of the detective's shoulder span. He watched the orange highlighted mass pulling on the arms dealer.

"AHHH … HUHUHGH!"

SHULK!

The head of Roman Venture was twisted off with a brutal tug. The audible sound of blood splash came after the gurgle. A Heavy thud echoed as the large mass turned his attention to the soldier, who trained his fire arm on him.

"What matter of strange creature are you?" The voice was deep and base, with a mechanical echo buried deep inside it.

"Jinx" Ryan shot back.

Unable to fully grasp through orange who or what it was he was seeing, the soldier turned off detection mode, switching back to the dark blanket of normal sight. The outline of a physic that he could make out could out muscle a gorilla. The only thing that was visible was a chrome mask that looked ancient Greek in origin.

There was a low growl as large eyes through slits dipped in an inhuman purple studied Ryan. "You're not human … at least not like the others." He said.

"At least I have that over you." The soldier countered. He paused at the monster looming over him. "You the one who killed Ellison?" He nodded his head fearlessly.

"A minor annoyance."

"And Cromartie?"

"It had a name?"

"It tends to help … Skynet couldn't keep calling them flunky one and Flunky two. What would happen if it got the names confused and sent the screw up to kill a target and the golden girl to collect books to fuel the pep rally bonfire?"

The air turned fowl as there was a sickening slush of rancid meat, slipping against one another. "And you would know about Skynet's golden girl wouldn't you?" He asked.

Ryan narrowed his eyes. "What did you say to me?" there was darkness to his voice.

"My father told me of you … The Abomination, with the stolen face of my beloved. An outlaw cloaked in the guise of a Detective."

"Well at least I know what to put down as a stage name."

"I've watched you, Highwaymen … you're well taught, for a pirate, but your antiquated fighting skills and obsolete training won't save you, and you won't stop me … You're down the rabbit hole and far from the messiah and his metal witch's nest _Little__Robin._"

The black haired man sneered at the name that was foreign from a stranger's voice to his own ears. "If you're threatening me … there's a line." He locked eyes with a bottomless pit of darkness clothed in violet.

At any moment, at any slightest tick of a move they could've exploded into action. But just at the split second to oblivion the dark gym was alive with motors and the blinding flash of red and blue bubble gum lights that strobed the warehouse.

Ryan turned back, the word beloved fresh on his mind. "I don't know who or what you are … but you stay away from _her_ or I'll take you down." He warned.

"Brave … but misguided. I've spared you this far for I found you amusing. But I will not tolerate you standing between me and my beloved. If you do so again … I'll break you!" the voice was slowly building to something, an impossible anger that was deep in the core of the mass of muscle and metal.

A grim smirk crossed the man's lips as the sound of a police battering ram began to pound against the doors. "Bigger men and machines have made that promise … and I'm still here." He replied coldly.

The monster slowly began to fade into the shadows of the shattered wall. "One day I'll return you to the hell that spawn you, abomination … and my love will drink your blood from your skull." His voice faded.

BANG!

Suddenly the bolted business doors blew open and men with automatics and SWAT armor sprang through the breach and onto the ground floor led by a man in a fedora and wrinkled overcoat.

"LAPD NO ONE MOVE!" Jonathan Reese screamed.

The lights sputtered before, they, out of seemingly nowhere came on with a noise like a phantom slamming heavy doors. The warehouse gym looked to be devoid of any life. But every police officer and tactical team member was suddenly exposed to the carnage masked by merciful darkness. Many recoiled at the smell and sight of blood, deformed body, and severed limb that was scattered on the floor and weight benches.

"Think they got the memo, Detective?"

"Wise ass."


	5. Interlude: Part I - The Man Who Laughs

**End of Act One **

**Interlude Part I: The Man Who Laughs**

Top architect Arthur and his son _Rupert Chandler_ broke ground for Pescadero Asylum for the Criminally Insane, in the year 1900. The funds donated from the yearly profits from various charities run by philanthropist and transplanted English aristocrat William _Brydon_, the newly married Alyssa _Goodwin_, sister of William and her husband Alastair _Goodwin_ a former prestigious Colonel of her majesty's garrison in central India. The Chandlers chose to build the asylum on top of the ruins of the old Spanish sanitarium that had been maintained by the monks of the Order of Santa Antonio. They were the caretakers to those who were lost to God, and minds. It was only fitting that Pescadero's first patient was Juan Gutierrez, a sociopathic merchant exiled from his family in Mexico, who lost what little money he had in the cock fights of Santa Clara. In a booze filled rage, with the endless voice of his mother calling him a sinner for his gambling and constant need to cut upon his younger sister as a boy, he slaughtered the monks. Once constructed, the facility was run by William and Alyssa's brother Robert, a tenured professor of psychology and medicine. He had been dismissed from Cambridge University for his devoted beliefs to Eugenics and Utopia of a brighter tomorrow through the proper breeding out of weaker races and ethnicities. Beliefs that proved detrimental to his reputation and career when it was found that he had been singling out students in order to lure them to his home where he would drug them into copulation with each other so that he may study their bastard child when born. Finding the isolated small town in the far west shown to them, the philanthropy of the chosen few who made the journey into exile proved to be the first step in their larger plans to put down roots in the promised location of the city of the future. Together they could create the utopia they were promised by the metal man with the glowing eyes known only as _Kaliba. _He was a mysterious figure that came to visit each of them personally with his master's dreams.

Over the years the asylum changed names and goals, from housing criminals, to becoming a rehab for the rich and famous in the boom of the late thirties. Their older patients from the long lost area of Roger Brydon, who somewhere along the line had lost his own fragile mind and became a ward of his own abode, disappeared, and were never heard from again.

In the late sixties, a more liberal attitude turned the building into a normal mental health facility. It was no longer an asylum, it was a hospital. It was no longer a place to lock the criminals of a bent town, and those with high profile relationships not needing to be seen again; it was a place to integrate the disenfranchised back into society. For nearly forty years Pescadero was a place of healing.

Then she came.

Sarah Jeanette Connor was brought to Pescadero State Mental Health Hospital from Black Iron Prison in June of 1994. Young and beautiful, Sarah Connor was a strong, self-made soldier, who was automatically diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, with delusions of nuclear apocalypse. Her physician, Doctor Peter Silberman, said it was because of her subsequent brain washing and conformity to the belief systems of the man who raped her. That person being Silberman's last patient, a then-considered psychotic named Kyle Reese. It was a joke that spread throughout the LAPD that day in May of 1984 that the phone book killer, then thought to be Kyle, had to be related to Captain Thomas Derek Reese. That night when he told his family at the pizza joint about the Irony, it never occurred to anyone that the name would stick with the Captain's youngest child … Jonathan Reese.

For three years Sarah Connor tried again and again to escape, breaking the staffs' bones and single handedly raising the state's worker comp fees by seventy five percent in a year and a half. One older guard went as far as to squeeze her breasts just so he could retire on disability when she shattered his forearm. With each escape attempt, requests were made time and time again for extra security. Soon enough each wing of was equipped with the latest equipment and outfitted with highly trained guards to keep her secure. It was her final and successful escape attempt in the summer of 1997 that changed Pescadero forever.

The wanton destruction of that night, and the failure to stop it by the Pescadero staff, brought on a new militaristic change to personnel. In 1998, a year after the destruction of Cyberdyne Corp., a large benefactor to the hospital, the state deemed it necessary to change Pescadero back with the most advanced technology and the highest of trained guards. Pescadero had come full circle.

It was an eerily calm day for the city of Los Angeles, despite the sun shown in all its harsh glory on the Southern California surface, there were a few wisps of clouds. They were small, but defiant as they slowly floated thousands of miles above the building below. In the dusk, the sterile walls of the asylum looked to be painted with orange and purple watercolors. The last light of the day shown through the rusted bars over the bullet proof windows like stain glass monuments to the decrepit building that contained the human waste and filth of nearly fifty years of the dark history of a two-faced city masked in gilt and glamour.

Wheels squeaked like the rhythmic cry of hungry baby birds abandoned in a nest. The wheelchair navigated by a man in all white with an offsetting black nightstick was escorted by two armed guards dressed in riot armor and taser batons. To their right sat doors, reinforced by steel frames. Through them was a mirrored window, followed by a clear one next door down where interns gathered taking notes. The interrogation rooms were sparsely populated this late in the day. But for some reason the guards kept going and the orderly only momentarily gave a double take at their passing of the interrogation area. The heavy set black man turned to his charge with a blink, but shrugged and kept pushing.

They were stopped by a wood paneled door that appeared almost off the hinges. Unshackling a rusted chain that was freed by a key to a rusted lock, the guards opened the door.

"Hey man … this is part of old Pescadero. I thought we weren't supposed to go down here." The orderly said, peering through the dusty windows. Like night and day the sterile building gave way to darkness past the doors. As light faded, the clouds of dust could be seen basking in its dwindling rays. Down the hall, rotted cells of rusted bars hung open and collapsed to the floor. Everyone kept saying that they were going to renovate the area, something that hadn't happened in almost seventy years.

One of the guards turned sharp brown eyes toward him. "Warden's orders … Interrogation room 1" he pointed his baton down the hall.

The large man focused big eyes on the patient in his care for the moment. "Are you sure? This guy's been in here for over twenty years … and no one's come to see him once." It wasn't that he cared for the guy; it was more that he didn't want to take the stroll alone and wait outside as night began to set on the building.

"Warden's orders."

He gave a steadying sigh and nodded. Just as he was about to take his first step, a strong blast of cold air, like the breath of some great ice dragon sleeping in the deep dungeons below, rushed over all of them. The orderly froze on the stick so to speak and held his ground as the air died down. A former UCLA football player didn't show fear, but he did make a hesitant plea with an unsure look to the guard. The guard's answer was a hard tap of the baton into his other palm.

For a moment he felt like bolting, the orderly had never really believed in ghosts all that much. He figured that most incidents could be explained away through practicality, and for those few that couldn't … well it was just weird and he'll leave at that. He had heard rumors that there was something about old Pescadero that was downright cold, both figuratively and temperature wise. Even on the hottest days in Southern California, the old rundown cells and basement interrogation rooms were cold. He used to think that it was just the fact that the super conductor AC was hooked up in there somewhere till he realized that they were on the other side of the building.

Some of the older guys had told him that back in the old days, back in the first couple of decades that the first head shrink used to experiment on patients in the basements of the old asylum. They say that if you go down far enough that you'll find all sorts of old rusty saws, strange bondage child delivery beds, dissection tables for babies, and weird probes meant for female prisoners … It was a real smorgasbord of screwed up stuff that could turn your hair white, they say. Back then he thought they were just trying to scare him because he was new, but now looking down the corridor, he gave a long sigh when realizing that maybe it wasn't the best idea to be thinking about that stuff.

Squeaking like usual, the wheelchair was first through the threshold and soon enough, so was the orderly. The security guards shut the door with a loud clack. The orderly turned back, expecting them to behind him, but they weren't. A sudden groping of cold settled under his collar, and a troubling sense of anxiety welled up inside him. It was like the blast that hit him before, but this time it was like hundreds of bony fingers grasping for his neck. On instinct he swatted at nothing, looking rather foolish he thought. Flicking wide eyes around he realized that it was just him and the prisoner, who hadn't said a word. His security blanket was an exasperated sigh of a hard boiled attitude of the Lethal Weapon mentality of him being too old for this shit.

He continued onward though, wary of his surroundings, despite the strong voice in head telling him there was nothing down the corridor. To his right and left were rows of old cells, those to the right had frosted windows, painted purple in the dying light, shadows growing in the corners. But to his left, the cells were cast iron doors, no bars. Inside were torn and tattered walls of padding, foam was hanging out like intestines, the color of brown and soiled yellow. They had the smell of old decay and disease that seemed to have swept from every corner. He figured that it had to be a health code violation of some sort to leave this wing of the asylum so ruined.

For a moment he thought he saw something in the corner of his eyes. The figure was skinny, sunken, curled up in a corner of the fourth cell on the left, rocking back and forth. Next to it was a message written in something brown and from the smell it wasn't dried blood. "He was begging for it." He read and glared in some old form of outrage at the endless possibility of what the criminal's old message could mean. Really what he wanted to know was what someone was doing in here. But the minute he turned fully reaching for his polished nightstick he was more surprised to find that no one seemed to have been there all along.

Giving a shaky breath, he pushed the nightstick back down on his belt and continued forward. He couldn't help but watch his prisoner, wondering if he at least felt something. But his man looked forward, tilting his head from side to side as if hearing music of some sort. He shook his head with a disbelieving look, continuing to the end of the hall. Every other cell he passed, he could swear he saw something of some sort. An animal like creature holding onto bars, feet pressed to the wall trying to look out the window. Behind him a blond girl, in a hospital gown following him. Yet he shook his head again and figured he shouldn't have eaten so many cupcakes before going duty; his blood sugar was too high. Yet he couldn't shake the feeling of hundreds of eyes following him, wanting to pounce and yet waiting … waiting for what? He wasn't sure; because he was alone it looked like.

When he reached the far wall there was a narrow corridor to the left. A plaque sign with an arrow pointed down it, but it was written in such looping cursive and had been so faded with age, that he couldn't make out what it was saying even if had been in English.

Sighing, he shook his head and moved forward, the squeaking of the wheelchair becoming louder in the confined space, as white tile gave way to old stone. The path was straight, but dipped like a ramp and the further down he went the colder it got. Reaching the mouth of the exit, the orderly and his charge arrived in a stone room that looked more like a dungeon than a mental health facility. The bars on the cells were thick iron and close-weaved like a net. Above beams of light were cast down from barred holes in the ceiling. Where light touched, potholes of eroded stone marred the floor.

The orderly thought for a moment that he was going to go back. He wasn't supposed to be down here anyway, and this was starting to look more and more like a prank of some sort, and he needed this job … There was something that caught his eye. Down another corridor at the far room the glow of light could be seen. Curiosity got the better of him and he began pushing the wheelchair again, squinting as he went.

He was almost startled when his charge turned toward something in interest. He looked down at him and glared, before following his gaze to one of the cells, inclining his head forward he squinted hard.

"Jesus …" He was taken aback by the skeleton slumped against the bars, clothed in long sheer pants and shirt, a uniform of imprisonment from long ago. This … this had to be a prank, it had to be. Some little punk ass bitch was messing with him. There's just no way this place was real … or at least as real as this place was making him think.

His breath was heavy and drawn out as he pushed the chair a little faster toward the light. If this was a prank, if it was someone's sick idea of a joke … all he wanted to do was get to the punch line already. Rolling down the incline of old stone, he reached a passage between two cells in the middle of the row. It was a stone staircase leading down into the underground passages of a foundation of something long forgotten. The way was lit by stain glass lanterns, little dancing flames cast odd and frightening shapes on the walls of the passage. It suddenly hit the orderly that he felt as if he had hit a time pocket of some sort.

He snorted and shook his head. "I AINT STUPID!" He yelled bellow. "Man, fuck ya'll … I don't play that." He said loudly. Even if he were dumb enough to go down into the solitary confinement of the old Spanish mission, there wasn't any way to get his prisoner down there.

"I agree …"

A cold sweat rolled down a big ash colored face as a voice with a dark, almost metallic echo, accompanied a large looming figure that stood behind him. Down the passage the light seemed to retreat down into the very bottom of the lanterns. The smell of the looming monster was like the cells of the old asylum rotted musk of decay.

"AHHHHH!"

SQUICH!

Blood smeared the front of the prisoner in the wheel chair, yet he seemed to revel in it as if the hot spray of life upon him somehow awoke him from a slumber. He let the liquid of the orderly run down his face like a baptism … a rebirth. When the monster turned his chrome masked face toward the prisoner he was wordless. Blood ran down yellowed teeth filled down to razors …

Showcased in a clown's rictus grin.

* * *

There wasn't much preparation to John Connor's costume. He simply put on his digital camo fatigues from Presidio Alto over a black t-shirt, and wore a gun belt with Cameron's present holstered at his side without a clip. He was beginning to really become annoyed with the wait for everyone else.

"_You'd think with the time it's taking Mom and Cameron that they were going to the prom."_

John sighed and clicked on the television. A DVD menu for the fourth disc of the Wonder Woman television series, starring Lynda Carter, was left running. After Cameron had chosen her costume the other day, she had bought the entire Wonder Woman. She had spent the last twenty-four hours watching it just to make sure she understood who she was dressing up as. It had amused John to find that the first-ever bonding time Cameron and Sarah had was watching the show. It was one of Sarah's favorites as a preteen.

"_The wonders of television …" _

Snorting, John turned off the DVD player, and flicked to network station, and became absorbed in game six of a World Series Baseball game. There was a loud knock on the front door. John sighed with a glare, turning his head toward it.

"Forget it Timmy!" John yelled at the entrance to his house.

"Trick or treat!" the voice of an obnoxious ten-year-old in an astronaut costume yelled through the door.

"No!" John shouted back from the couch.

Just then the sound of someone coming down the stairs accompanied the defiant knock on the front door. There was shuffling of loafers nearby, and a scraping of the curtain rod, as the fabric was pulled back, immediately followed by the sound of someone shamelessly biting into a candy bar. After a beat the curtains closed with a metallic echo through the house.

"Dick!" the boy's voice yelled through the door at Derek, who entered the living room munching on a candy bar.

John ignored his uncle to watch the event of a foul ball that just missed the separating post. With a relieved sigh, he turned to Derek and gave an amused "Huh".

Derek was in a wrinkled khaki trench coat and wore fedora hat atop his head.

"Detective" he answered John's intrigued look.

"Nice …" John complemented going back to the game.

"You know going back four generations the Reese's have been cops." Derek commented off handedly, sitting down on the other side of the couch. He was more self-musing than story telling.

John turned back to Derek with an interested look. It wasn't often that John got family history stories, Mostly because he didn't know his dad. With Sarah it was different, he knew that her great grandmother or grandmother he wasn't sure which had done things to Sarah when she was in high school. He wasn't sure what they were, but when he was little and they slept together, he would hear her in her sleep, begging someone not to touch her and swear that she was a good girl and would try harder next time. By the time she was making defeated sobs, he would always turn over and kiss her head. She would startle awake then, after a moment they would hold each other as she whispered her undying love in his ear, telling him she didn't ever want to lose him. Now, every once in a while John would still pass by her room and hear her. They didn't cling to one another like they used to when they were young, but she still touched his face and he still kissed her and that was enough. But based on those factors alone, John was fine being in the dark about his mother's family.

"In fact, it's how he met mom. He was working on a case back when she was on a Disney sitcom." He chuckled with a shake of his head.

John was taken aback. "Your mom was on the Disney channel?" He asked. "Who was she?" He pursued.

But Derek just smirked and shook his head at the question. "Back up dancer." He sighed. John smiled and both traded a laugh and paused for a moment, till his uncle made a self-amusing noise.

"What?" John smiled back with a puzzled face. Derek shook his head.

"It's just that it seems everyone in our family falls in love with only one woman in their life." Derek scratched his ear. "Pops and Grams, Mom and Dad, and your Dad and Mom …" He listed off in deep thought.

John pondered what his uncle was saying.

He wondered where he fit as he began to give some serious thought about his family history. He wasn't sure if there will ever be anyone. Yet the sad part was he couldn't think or even imagine there being anyone. That road of thought made him suddenly guilty that after all this time Riley hadn't even made a dent in his heart. She was fun to be around, and he liked her, but to say he loved her was far from the truth.

Yet when he thought of the future … all he could think of was Cameron.

Numbly, John watched a strike out. He turned back to Derek, who seemed sad about something that was triggered by his observation. Both males, rather than air out their sad fears etched on their faces, chose to instead ignore each other's pensive looks and concentrated on the World Series.

During a commercial break a silhouette appeared next to the uncle and nephew. Cameron's hair was curled to perfection, with a gold tiara set upon her brow. The satiny-nylon red Wonder Woman top was skin tight on her gorgeous figure; tracing every perfect curve of her upper body. The blue miniskirt with white stars gracefully played off her long, toned legs. A red cape with silver stars was tied around her neck, covering her smooth, bare shoulders. While her red and white boots made clacking sounds on the wooden floor. Her brown eyes looked to John's costume and she gave a human-like, endearing smile his way.

"Wow …" John directed a wolf-whistle toward his protector playfully. Derek, however, chose to give a uninspired grunt of crippling uncaring at the outfit and went back to the game.

Without hesitation, the cyborg walked out of the light and into the darkened living room, settling between Derek and John. Derek scoffed in annoyance, but John unfazed, sat where he was, comfortably lounging with an arm behind Cameron's stiff form on the back of the couch. She gave a small ghost of a smile at the action, and with minuscule movement got closer to him. Soon both seemed to not realize that Cameron was pressed into his ribs as he slouched back, and the two looked almost like a couple relaxing before a night out. The three stayed silent as the game continued, slowly being drawn into it again.

THUMP!

"Shit!"

"Mom … you good?" John called from the couch, not turning away from the TV at the sound of his mother's sixth slip on the long train of her costume dress.

"I'm good" Sarah called back from her sitting position on the stairs. Derek handed John his candy bar and went to go help Sarah.

Cameron blinked at the television commercial about cavemen and car insurance, which she was sure was inaccurate. But then like John had always told her. "_Can't believe everything you see on the tube." _Frowning, she stared at the metallic bracelets on her wrists and twisted them a moment.

"John …?" Cameron asked.

"Huh …" he grunted, while arching back, watching the shadows of his Mom and Uncle.

"You think that if I made bracelets out of Coltan, I could deflect bullets?" she asked curiously.

Quirking an eyebrow, he turned back to Cameron and shrugged. "I guess, but then wouldn't that be like me making bracelets out of human bones?" he asked. The cybernetic girl thought about what he said for a moment.

"Yes, but cavemen used to make jewelry out of human and animal bones and they're buying insurance now." She explained, almost defensive of her plans to construct Amazon bracelets. Letting out a small chuckle, John shook his head at her logic.

"This is totally unnecessary."

Sarah complained as Derek came into the room, carrying her in his arms. John smiled at the sight as the two in the dark, with his mother's white dress and Derek's suit and the way he was carrying her, it was almost like he was a groom carrying his new bride over the threshold of their home.

"Quit bitching … and for the record I can't understand how you got yourself so tangled in the first place." Derek growled.

"_Yep, just like a married couple." _

Sitting down in his original spot he turned on a lamp, accommodating Sarah, who was sitting in his lap. Sarah was breath taking in her costume. She had done just the right touches of make-up, and pinned back her longer hair so that it touched her lower back. Derek gave a huff as Sarah wiggled, as the two tried to figure it all out.

For a moment there was no lingering tension between the family, no pressure from the future, no death of a mob boss, and no pondering suspicions of the term I love you. It was simply a family trying to get ready for a Halloween party. Seeing the need to capture a rare, happily normal moment between his loved ones and uncle, John got up to get something he had seen in a storage closet.

* * *

There was a quiet, muffled sound of recorded screams and witch laughter echoing out of Kacy Cotton's house as local neighbors and children piled onto the patio and back yard of the large house.

Amongst several parked cars, a sleek gun metal black street racing motorcycle swerved into a tight space near the curb. The rider powered down his ride and kicked down the stand. Black curls fell free when a matching helmet with two blue strips at the top. With the tinted visor removed green eyes examined the area with familiarity. The feeling was strange as he placed his boots on the asphalt, feeling a connection to the ground.

"Some places don't change …"

His gaze flicked back and forth on his surroundings, before he hung his helmet on the handle and dismounted his cycle. He gave a frown as he watched colorfully dressed people in clothing that most wouldn't wear in public. Ryan had heard of Halloween before, and seen pictures, but to experience it up close was something completely different. Looking down he saw that his faithful brown leather jacket, yesterday's jeans, and a black T-shirt under a twenty-year-old navy blue Henley that was a size too big and clearly not his originally was nowhere near the acceptable dress for the party.

He shoved his hands in his coat pockets and began walking across the lawn toward the front porch. Half way there, he stopped abruptly just missing a shifty-eyed, red-headed ten year-old in an astronaut costume laughing to himself as he ran away. Sensing something mischievous, he watched the kid for a moment. With a shake of his head, he continued forward, reaching a blond, pregnant woman in a pirate costume at the steps.

"Two things …" the eye patched hostess addressed him before he could give her a hello. Ryan twitched an eye. "You're supposed to be in a costume and two, why can't you make more of an effort?" she asked disappointedly.

"Well first of all, the words 'costume party' wasn't in the description, second I was up late last night." Ryan answered Kacy's questions still amused at her getup.

"It's a Halloween party … costumes are, like, mandatory." Angrily, Kacy slapped his arm.

"What was that for?" Ryan rubbed his arm tenderly.

"How are you supposed to get my friend laid if you can't even bother to bring the A-game, hotshot!" she gritted her teeth at him.

"Excuse me?" Ryan said with outrage in his voice.

"Son of a bitch!" A familiar voice called out angrily.

The sound of the voice caused Ryan to smile smugly. It was a blast from the past to hear the voice utter the phrase he had heard a million times, usually because it was something he had done as a teenager.

Turning, Kacy and Ryan looked to a house a football field's length away as a man in fedora and trench coat rushed out and examined a black pickup truck which had words written on the windshield in red.

**JOHN AND CAMERON LYING NEXT TO A TREE **

**F.U.C.K.I.N.G**

"ASTRONOUT!" Derek yelled to the lawn over. "YOU LITTLE RAT BASTARD!" there was a vengeance to his shouts.

Suddenly Kacy tensed and she began looking around. Ryan watched her in confusion as she began looking around. "She's here … she's coming!" She announced to him in offense that he was just standing there.

"Who?"

"The house!"

"I don't know if you've noticed … but the house's already here."

"Funny, Smartass, now get inside the house!"

"What?"

"She's coming!"

"Who's she?!"

"Get in there!"

"Seriously?"

"Get in there and wait!"

Sarah frowned as she walked to the entrance of her neighbor's house watching the pregnant lady pushing somebody inside against their will.

"Kacy?" Sarah called with a suspicious smile.

Hearing the voice, the blond slammed the front door which gave a secondary thump followed by a pained muffled curse word.

"Hey! You came!" Kacy said with a too suspicious cheeriness. Sarah craned her neck over Kacy to study the door. Seeing the action the pregnant pirate stepped in front to block her view.

"Oh my god, look at you!" this time the blond was genuine in shock at the family's costumes, but was more focused on Sarah. As usual the royal-looking beauty shrugged humbly at the flabbergasted compliment. "You're getting an award and reward tonight for that costume." Her smirk was devious at best.

"What?"

"What?" The pregnant woman played ignorance of her last comment, scratching her ear looking around as if someone might have added to their conversation.

However the pregnant woman's zeal was stashed when someone appeared that brought on an awkward silence that was cast over the three. Derek had walked up behind Sarah with a scowl on his face, turning back toward their truck.

"Hey it's the Dick …" Kacy narrowed her eyes at him after observing his costume.

The relationship between Kacy Cotton and Derek Reese had always been up and down. At first she was convinced that Derek and Sarah were married, but then she found out that they were only in-laws, and while she was okay with that, she felt like they were more to each other than that. There was a respect for the man when she saw that he took care of Sarah and the family like a true man of the house, but lately Kacy had noticed that he had been absent. With the added tension between John and everyone, Kacy felt sorry that Sarah was alone a lot these days.

"Nice to see you, too." He grunted at her. After a trade of dirty looks, the restaurant manager lightened her face.

"Party's in the back." She smiled sweetly. With a suspicious look Sarah motioned the soldier to go to the side of the house. Watching them leave, Kacy got a smug look and looked down at her belly.

"Look baby, your momma is about to give one of our friends a really good night."

* * *

John Connor had never been the life of any party, and in fact, he had never liked them all that much. He didn't have much experience with them and the truth was he didn't feel the need to go to them. His whole life, before Sarah's capture and imprisonment, he had always liked just hanging out with his mother. He never saw anything wrong with it and he often felt guilty when he wasn't with her, because he never wanted her to be lonely.

When she would disappear for weeks at a time training he never got to hear from her that much. She would set him up by himself at motels. She lied to him a lot, saying that it was like he had his own house and he could make his own rules. But even with no structured bed time and eating what he wanted he still missed her terribly.

The best part of when she was with him were the days he would wake up and an arm would be around him. He would turn over and there was Sarah, sleeping under the covers with him. She looked so vulnerable and yet so beautiful that all young John wanted to do was hold her instead of go to school. Sometimes John thought that Sarah never realized how much he loved her. Sure he knew how much she loved him, it was in her eyes, in her body movements, the way she hugged him with nothing held back. There was no such thing as a light hug from his mother. But sometimes he wondered if she believed that he was indifferent, or that she couldn't let him love her. Maybe she was scared that she would hurt him again …

It was six years ago that the illusion John had been living in was shattered. It was just before Sarah was taken to Pescadero. John was in his motel room studying when he decided to break the rules that his mother had set down, being that it was the first time she had ever told him where she was going to be. He broke the cardinal rule, which was never approach her on the street if she didn't approach you. But he couldn't help but go find his mom to see what she was doing that Halloween night. It had been a while since she dropped by to see him, and he was hoping she would come to watch Charlie Brown with him. It was one of the few traditions that they held. Instead, he found the reason why Sarah didn't want him to approach her. Sarah Connor had paid her way through training, but this, this was different. John learned that his mother had gotten married in the month that she had been gone. That night he found his Sarah in a large three story mansion. Using the field glasses she had left behind, John watched with tears in his eyes as she sat on the couch with an older man and his two kids in their Halloween costumes, as they watched Charlie Brown and ate candy.

The next morning Sarah came to see him with a smile, only to be confronted with a heartbroken little boy. Sarah was furious, he wasn't supposed to go near her, he wasn't supposed to see what she was doing. John had bit back that she had replaced him. He had always known that his mother had come from a lot of money, and deep down he blamed himself for her living the way they did. His mother was irrational. She had never broken a heart before and she didn't know how to make it up or put it back together. When he left for school, the last word he said to her was one he lived to regret for three years. He told her that he didn't love her anymore.

He never knew that Sarah was the trophy fiancée of the Director of Special Projects at Cyberdyne. When John told her he didn't love her Sarah let it warp her mood and heart to the point of madness. She was shot later that night trying to blow up the factory

Standing in the dark of the small wooded area between Kacy and their house, John Connor felt a rush of pain at the memories. He always knew he'd live to regret the day he told his mother he didn't love her. It seemed every night John felt like he was crouched behind a barred entrance watching the only person he ever loved abandon him through field glasses. In fact, he never went to parties because he always felt that way. He wasn't normal … He wasn't meant for happiness.

John was about to blow the off the party, it wasn't him. He would go home, mess around on the computer, research … something. But that's when he heard the misplaced sound.

The hair on the back of his neck stood straight up as he heard it. Years of training, air raids in the park, search and destroy exercises in jungles, running a mile while Sarah Connor chased after you, yelling in your ear. John Connor knew when danger was near, he didn't need to see it, didn't need to smell it. Danger was in his blood, a sixth sense. He stood still eyes flicked from side to side. The ground rustled with hurried footsteps.

"Hehehehehe"

A childlike chuckle in the wind had him reach for his pistol. THERE, he snapped his head to the right and in the shadows saw something rush behind the trees. He watched it go, big and plum, the outline of a top hat and then it was gone.

John relaxed his muscles with a calming shudder, which shook his frame loose. Yet, loose and relaxed for the moment, he couldn't let the feeling of danger pass. Had his mother been with him she would've ordered him back to the house and had found Cameron … Cameron.

"Cameron?" He called.

She had been ahead of him as they strolled along the back way to the party. John liked their landlord, but she was a bit much to take and today of all days he wasn't in a Kacy mood. Cameron had protested, the woods, even only sixty yards of it, were a security risk. He had teased her about being afraid of the headless horsemen. She had replied "Only if he prevents me from getting to you in time." He had let her go ahead after that. She had said something that hit him to the bone. She was his protector; of course she would say something like that. But John was raised by Sarah Connor, when someone said things like that you couldn't help but feel them in you. He suddenly had been reminded of Derek's musing about that one person in your life, the constant companion, the mate.

"Cameron?"

"Hehehe"

John heard it again as he continued forward. He could make out the amusing cartoonish giggle that one would associate with a perverse child or a clown. Getting closer to the house, the sound of cheesy Halloween music that you could probably find in a child's CD echoed in the forest. The outline of Kacy's house was illuminated by tiki torches that peered just above her privacy fence line. Up ahead he saw shapes of people standing in groups on the side lawn, the fence door open. John jogged past people and into the big backyard. A long buffet table sat at the far end, a makeshift dancing area stood in the middle, and a table with benches sat under the pregnant woman's covered porch.

He scanned the semi-crowded area like a hawk, looking for the satiny shimmer of red, white, and blue nylon. His narrow eyes caught a glint and he focused on it. It came from a familiar tiara that was in his lost companions curled hair.

Cameron's frame was almost swallowed by the looming specter of a familiar shadow that cause John to tense all over again. The man was big in every way possible. He was tall and boisterous. His large gut seemed almost comical, round like a ball, making it seem that he could bounce if dropped on a hard wood floor. His garb was even stranger - a long retro tux and tails, like a gentlemen from the Victorian era of London. But while other's seemed to wear a costume, the mold and moth holes on the black coat looked almost as if he had stolen clothing from a museum to wear.

The big man had Cameron pushed against the wooden planks of a corner of the fence, his moth eaten gloves stained with aged green mold were firmly clamped to her waist. His cyborg companion's face was blank and unanimated, like a fine porcelain doll. The large man was running a nose up her neck like she was some fine meal to dine upon.

A sudden black rage took hold of John. He was reminded of the night that he watched his mother with strangers and the crushing loneliness of that moment. He remembered on this night last year, sitting at his computer and turning back to watch Cameron sitting on a stool watching him in fascination. He had thought in that moment that he would never be replaced again. That he would never be alone on Halloween again. Now he let that crushing resentment of this night turn into something else.

"Hands off!"

Somewhere between the memory of Cameron giving a ghost of a smile when he turned back to watch her, to the present of him standing in front of her defensively, John had rushed forward and shouldered the big man away from her, body checking him into the fence with loud plunk. He then grasped the front of his tux that had a god awful stench and judo threw him. John's sudden assault sent Cameron's molester face first into Kacy's yard to eat grass. The action had stopped the party and all eyes were on the altercation that was growing.

There was something menacing about the way his opponent slowly brushed himself off, finding his feet, his back to John and a blank Cameron. He removed his tophat from his head exposing a buzz cut of blond hair, old laceration scars marring the back of his head like a cutlery board. He aired his hat out, before placing back. Side eying his opponent, the large man's almost black eyes seemed to glint in the firelight as he slowly turned.

John took a step back at the first glimpse of the obese man. His face was smeared in white paste makeup, more goop like frosting, than powder. His eye area was plastered black, and the clown's lipstick was rubbed all over his mouth. There was something about the smeared on clown face that added another worldly frightening look to him. He looked like a monster not a clown. When John looked into his eyes he saw nothing human about him. Small blue eyes looked almost black and sparkling with a deep twisting that John felt like he was looking into an abyss.

He waited for something to change, something to show that he was human, and yet his eye twitched when finding familiarity in the emerald eyes, stern for combat. There was an over whelming sense of deviant joy, seeing not only John, but John with Cameron. Slowly, a grotesque facial expression formed in the painfully wide rictus grin of yellow teeth, filed like razors. "Connor" He said so quietly that John could've sworn he heard him wrong. The clown chomped his fangs with a clamp and ground them together, blood running down the corner of his mouth. Suddenly he began to twirl a gentlemen's cane in between his fingers and whistle Peter's theme from "Peter and the Wolf" loudly.

The distraction was just long enough for him to pull a rusted revolver with a comically long barrel that looked to have been sitting around for twenty years. He pointed it at John with his demonic smile, but suddenly intense eyes.

"Draw!" He snarled.

John was quick, with one hand drawing his pistol, the other pulling Cameron behind him. Though he knew she was probably the safest amongst everyone, he still could stop the instinct encoded in his DNA to protect her.

POP!

Though faster than most, John wasn't quick enough, Cameron's gift, the chrome 45 with the black grip out, but not aimed. He flinched at the loud noise. The whole yard seemed to go quiet, everyone with their breath trapped inside them.

"Hehehehehohohoho"

From the smoking barrel was a wooden pole sticking out. Attached to it was a green flag with the word BANG written in obnoxious cutesy letters in a flashing red. Around the flag confetti clouded the area like a party toy.

"**AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"**

The Clown roared in an awful, high pitched laugh that was as unnerving as it was frightening. John went from tense to a deep anger - teeth clenched, eyes narrowed to a glare. This only seemed to fuel the obese man's amusement. But when John moved forward fists clinched to white knuckles, he felt arms loop around his chest. Turning back quickly, he found that Cameron had snapped out of her blank setting and was restraining him. Her eyes were dangerously serious, her head viewing the situation over his shoulder. Seeing the motion, the clown shook his head, whistling a mocking tune to go with it.

"Bye, bye, Pretteh." His voice despite his high tone went to a low, sinister register. Cameron didn't react, but John, seeing his focus on the cyborg girl, pushed her so close to him that she was pressed into his back. Whistling some unknown tune the clown skipped away, like a small child, disappearing out of sight and through the fence door.

There was a long pause as everyone at the party seemed to be focused on the two. When he was sure he was gone, John let out a long drawn out breath. His body was shaking and he was panting. Closing his eyes, he felt a flat hand place itself on top of his pounding heart; he could feel the base thump against it. The boy didn't need to look to his side to know the girl was watching him; no words were needed to coach him. Slowly his heart rate slowed as conversations around them picked up again. No one approached them, but all still had a side eye interest in the two.

When he opened his eyes, the first thing he did was turn around and face the cyborg, whose eyes hadn't left him. Like always, they were blank and unmoving, portraying innocence behind those stern caramel eyes. The two stared into one another's eyes not flinching, not flickering eyebrows, and just looking at one another intimately as if John was sharing a soul with the machine in front of him. After a minute a sobering look played across John's face, blinking rapidly, getting some moisture back into his eyeballs while Cameron looked down.

"Are you okay?" He asked in a low voice almost in a whisper, not sure why.

The cyborg blinked. "I don't know." She replied. "I … I don't know what happened." For a brief moment it sounded as if she was afraid. Was she afraid of a lunatic fondling her and unable to do something, or was it that she was afraid that she was going to hurt John, a slow countdown to meltdown?

She was surprised however, when his hand brushed her hair out of her face. She looked up to find John placing his hand on her cheek gently. His eyes were like they had been in the diner, that John she had never known, but seemed to only appear for her.

"You won't hurt me." He said without a hint of hesitation.

She stared. "I can't explain it, John. It could be …" She started.

"No … you won't hurt me. You didn't in the car and you won't now." His speech was stern and sure. It gave Cameron confidence.

"My programming."

"You're not like the others …"

"I …"

"You're not." He cut her off shortly.

She wanted to believe it, if only for John, but she couldn't ignore what she knew of herself … and what lurked inside her. She tightened her cheek at him, in some ghost of annoyance. Denial was no solid basis for security.

"I don't think you understand how it works." She chastised.

A smirk appeared at the corner of his mouth, one that Cameron didn't expect, especially with the dueling stern voice she used. She felt a thumb rub the beauty mark just next to her eyebrow.

"No … I have faith."

"I don't."

He nodded. "Well then I'll have enough for both of us." He put a period on his sentence by massaging her cheek bone.

Who was this John she was seeing? It wasn't the cold calculating man she was reprogrammed by. He wasn't the unsure, awkward teenager, with hair in his eyes. He certainly wasn't the angry young man, running off with blonds and picking fights with his mother. Her suspicion seemed unfounded, because for all the faces he had for the world, somehow Cameron felt like this was who John Connor was, really was away from prying eyes and those trying to change and harden him. It was a piece of soul that no one could touch … no one but her. He was spurred on by concern of the clown's molesting hands and the memory of their friendship by the concern.

"Come on …" He motioned his head, stuffing his hands in his pockets and began walking toward the refreshment table.

She tilted her head, surprised that what happened washed off him. "What?" She asked. He turned back and chuckled.

"Let's go get some punch … stick around a little." He faced her again.

She frowned. "But you don't like Halloween." She protested.

He shrugged a shoulder. "Things change." He smiled. Striding close, she studied his face. She wasn't sure how to react, but there was no scrutinizing stare any longer.

"Since when?" She asked genuinely interested, returning to his lightened green eyes.

There was a grin on his face as he removed a hand from his pocket and offered it to her. "Since you came along." He replied in a sincere monotone.

Watching his hand a moment, with a considering glance, she outstretched her slim one. His hand folded to hers and when the cyborg looked up to meet his eyes there was a small smile that formed on her lips.

* * *

"This party's lame …" Derek grumbled as he walked next to Sarah, who was starting to master the train of her dress.

Her costume was a hit at the party. Not only was it a glamorous departure from some of the other costumes the mothers in the Neighborhood wore, but the strategic exposure of skin seemed to make the father's and teenage boys drool.

"And what would you say a great party would be?" Sarah huffed at Derek who she was getting tired of hearing complain.

"I could tell you, but there're kids around." He smirked as they sampled the snack bar. Though she narrowed her eyes at his comment, she couldn't hide the grin on her face at the tone of his voice. Before Sarah knew what was happening, Derek was fixing both of them hot dogs as the line began to move.

"You've been to many parties?" He asked as he worked. Sarah shrugged.

"Here and there …" She shook her head at him when he offered her relish. "You?" she asked.

"Parties in Tech-Com were pretty rare, but when they did happen it tended to get rowdy and end with some fist fights … here and there." He chuckled at a distant memory.

"Something you can share in public?" Sarah tilted her head at him.

Derek gave a smug grin and handed her a hot dog, done just perfectly. It sometimes scared Sarah how Derek could figure her likes and dislikes on almost intuition. The two found a private spot where other wallflowers had congregated on the side of the lawn. They talked and watched people on the open dance area.

"It's just this song." Derek chuckled as he took a bite of a hotdog. Sarah stuck out an ear to listen to a song.

"Gasoline Alley by Rod Stewart?" Sarah questioned. Derek shrugged.

"Back in early 2024 our entire division did a stint in Canada to bolster the Third Army there, and a corporal in me and Kyle's heard this song somewhere and changed the words to accommodate our situation." Derek smiled fondly as the lyrics were about to begin.

Sarah "huh" at his comment and as she bit in her hot dog she heard a familiar voice begin to sing different lyrics to the song.

"_I think I know now what's making me sad_

_It's yearning to return to my tunnel in Hollywood_

_I've realized maybe it was wrong to leave but_

_I can't seem to swallow my stupid Tech-com pride_

_Going home, running home, down to Home Plate base_

_Where we started from_

_Going home, running home to the Mexican deserts_

_Where I was born_

_Where the weather was better_

_And your freakin nails don't freeze_

_And the wind doesn't whistle at your knees_

_I'll pack my gear and catch a supplies chopper_

_And I'll be home before the Skynet patrols are_

_On the roll_

_Going home, running home, down to Home Plate base_

_Where we started from_

_Going home, running home to the Mexican deserts_

_Where I was born"_

As Derek sung, Sarah saw a light, almost nostalgic part of her roommate that she had never seen and felt herself liking a lot. For a moment he was back in Canada with all his friends and brother as they sung around a portable stove in the back of a supply truck in the snow drifts in the middle of the wilderness. Sarah couldn't fight the large grin on her face as she listened to him sing, imagining Kyle singing with the same stupid grin that the two people who loved him had right now.

"_But if anything should happen _

_And the climate goes wrong _

_Or the hyperthermia makes me say stupid shit_

_Let it be known that_

_My intentions where good_

_And I'd rather be_

_Puking from radiation if I could_

_And If battle calls me away_

_And it's my turn to go_

_Should the blood run cold in my veins_

_Just one favor I'll be asking you …_

_Don't bury me here it's too cold."_

Sarah was a little embarrassed when she let out a laugh at Derek's playful tone at the end of the lyrics before the chorus took over the song. He chuckled at her reaction to the song that was sung by the 132nd begrudgingly throughout the campaign. There was a small silence between the two; it had seemed like a long time since they had lowered their defenses around each other long enough to actually enjoy one another's company. Derek and Sarah shared a smile and relished the comfortable quiet with the both of them just brushing arms as they ate in silence.

"So … John's been a little off today." Derek said off handedly. Sarah's comfortable posture stiffened, and she cast her eyes down sadly as she took another bite of her hot dog.

"So he has." She acknowledged in a hardened voice.

"Is there a reason for that? At least something that hasn't happened recently?" he pushed not looking at her as he ate.

Conflicted about what to tell him, she threw her defenses up and crushed the napkin in her hands at the memory of the betrayed look on her little boys face when she came to see him on that morning after Halloween six years ago. He looked so sad and hurt as he accused her of pushing him aside for a new family while he sat alone in motel rooms. All that day she never felt sicker in her entire life as she carted two spoiled brats to soccer and jazz dance practice in a minivan while her one true love in life sat alone on a Saturday thinking that he was not loved. She had been confused and desperate, she had never broke a heart before, never hurt someone so deeply. People had hurt her that way before, she knew the helpless pain, the questioning of your very existence and unknown of who you were. She was young then, Sarah didn't brood so much, she didn't know what to do with herself. She wanted to die, to kill herself, to hurt herself, to punish herself for hurting something so precious and perfect, to steal it away from him as her family had to her.

"I'm done." Sarah said to Derek showing him her napkin. He got the message loud and clear, taking it, he left without a word giving her space.

She folded her arms around herself and fought tears. Every Halloween since her escape from Pescadero John had never wanted to be around her, and she knew that on this day that she shouldn't bother him. He still carried the scar, and even though he now knows why she did what she did, he still feels the hurt. There was nothing she wanted to do more at that moment than to take John into her arms and force him to stay there until he realized that he was her one and only purpose in life, and that she will always be his and no one else's.

Sarah wiped a single tear from her eye and sighed spotting someone she recognized in the distance who seemed to be feeling the same way.

Sitting on a table was the man from Kacy's diner, broodingly lost somewhere in his own mind that was thousands of years away. He had two day scruff and his black curls looked slightly disheveled from sleeplessness. He was still wrapped in that very familiar darkened brown vintage leather coat. For a moment Sarah thought of not engaging, patterns were dangerous, if this was the second time meeting someone, he might start asking questions.

For a second she played the scenario of what if he was following her? What if he was some sort of investigator sent by a terminator to find her, to find John? But as she continued to look into green eyes she slowly did away with the critical escape fantasy. He looked sad and tired, not just outwardly, but through his matching eyes to hers she saw the haunted gaze of his surroundings. It was as if he had been here before and was reliving painful memories, the sentimentality like poison in his blood. She knew the feeling. She herself had walked by places she used to frequent.

Then they were vibrant and colorful places, full of people and life. Now she walked down the street to find them in ruins, gutted carcasses, picked by buzzards. Forgotten trash heaps and brittle windows with foreclosure signs plastered on them. Something had happened to this city, It was such a shining example of promise and fertility of ideas now it was nothing. Or maybe she understood those people from other generations who had stared at her and her friends like they were the buzzards. The town never stayed the same, never catered to one generation. One minute you're dancing to Duran Duran, the next you're looking through glass at a darkened space that had meant something to you, to another life, another person, a girl. A beautiful girl not so happy or carefree, but while in those places she was an illusion of what she could've been. But that wasn't Sarah, that was a dream, someone else's life, that girl wasn't her.

Watching him, she felt the pain rise inside her. She wasn't sure why, Sarah Connor was never this empathetic toward anyone, especially to strangers she met once in a diner. Yet, for all her attitude of letting things be, what she remembered so much about the stranger was how he looked at her. Stared like she was something larger than life, someone important, with … love? Watching him she began to feel the way she felt when John looked that sad and regretful. Like she had to do something, like she had to make him smile, to make him think about something else. Sarah had to repay him.

Cautiously she made her way toward him, moving in from the side. She smirked in general at a crowd of neighbors that stopped their conversation to get a look at her. Choosing this costume was a mistake, she thought as their eyes stayed on her. It was a Security risk, because she was dressed like she was going to some fancy party in the hills like she would've when she was … no, that other girl wasn't her, she was a dream, another Sarah, not a Connor. But here in middle class suburbia where everyone went to the local department store to buy theirs, Sarah was over dressed and standing out like a sore thumb. Knowing what she knew now, she would've sent the costume away, but when Derek saw her in it, the first moment … she couldn't have helped herself if she tried. But right now she didn't want to think of Derek and that looked of surprise and fascination when he smiled, that rare smile that shown who he was once.

Reaching the table, she found her mystery man staring at something in his hand, in remorse. Up close she saw why she was so hell bent to get to him, why he was hurting her so much. It was because he looked like John in that very moment, the way her boy looked every Halloween night, brooding over the loss of something, picking the scab off an old wound to bleed out the bad blood. She fought the urge to touch his hair, to hold him … she got a grip fast, he was a stranger … he was …

"I'm stumped."

She ended the drabble in her brain by saying the first words that came to mind. The stranger paused a moment, but didn't look up. He had in his hand a silver pocket watch that looked like it had seen its better days.

"Maybe you should look into prosthetics?" He fired back, closing the watch and clasping it in his fist protectively. He still refused to look at her.

Sarah rolled her eyes playfully. "You have an answer for everything, don't you?" She asked with a hint of annoyance in her voice.

He chuckled grimly at her. "If I didn't this would be a short conversation wouldn't it?" He asked with a playfully mocking rhetorical question. In some ways he once again reminded her of John, the way he liked to play around with her, taking the clearly more intelligent route to her knuckle dragging as he liked to call it. He was quick and witty and that made her smile. When he finally turned his gaze toward her, she saw, much like everyone else that he wasn't ready for what she was wearing.

She felt his eyes glance over her frame, the exposed skin of her waist, the satiny cloth of the dress, the impressive bare back. But unlike everyone else who seemed watched her with carnal desires, the man seemed to look at her as if she was hurting him, like he had her. Sparking eyes watched her like she was some photograph from long ago, and worst, that something will happened to her that only he knew about. It made her uncomfortable and she averted her head. He cleared his throat and flicked his eyes elsewhere when he saw her action.

"So …" He drew out rubbing away mist with a hand. "Is this costume an exercise in ego … or are we taking a shrink's suggestion for self-confidence?" If he had gotten emotional, it seemed to disappear with the teasing voice.

Like the emotion inside him, the uncomfortable feeling left her, she frowned in annoyance at the question. "And what are you supposed to be?" She shot back, crossing her arms, studying the coat, old jeans, and long sleeve Henley, over a black t-shirt.

"A time traveler." He replied mockingly at her tone dripping with elitism of knowing he showed up without a costume.

She tilted her head in disinterest. "I hope not all Time Travelers look this way? It'll paint one hell of a bleak future for people in the past." She tried not to smirk, feeling proud at the blow she landed in their little back forth. He snorted and grasped his heart as if she stabbed it.

"And you think you look any better, with that Spartan get up." He gave her a once over and shook his head.

"Is it Spartan?" She asked.

He responded with an irritatingly charming smile. "Obviously." He hopped off his perch and began walking away. Sarah bit her lip with an exasperated huff and began following, if this conversation was going to end, it was going to be on her terms.

"You being an expert?" She snarked.

"Hey …" He played at offended. "Time Traveler." He motioned his head to himself, finding a column that held up the cover to Kacy's porch to lean on. She watched him watch people for a moment. She wasn't sure why she kept at him, people like him annoyed her. But the more she was around this stranger that could pose as her twin brother, the more it was almost like she knew him, like she's always known him.

She glared at him. "Okay, then what do Spartan queen's look like?" She asked with a gesture of invitation with spread arms, baiting him to critique her. Sarah thought this out to be good. He gave her a glance and playfully narrowed his eyes with a hard study.

"Well …" He sighed. "You've got the hair right, and you look the part." He complimented. "But the material of the dress is wrong … they didn't wear shiny nylon back then." He replied. "Nor pleather straps." He motioned to the leather binding that kept the silky material covering her. "Spartan queens also didn't have smoker's lines, laser removed tattoos, and a stab wound on their shoulder." He replied with a knowing look.

How Sarah was supposed to act to those observations was confusion to her. Was he trying to say that he knew more about her then he was letting on, or was he just doing that Detective thing just to annoy her even more? If it was anyone else she would say they were trying to intimidate her, trying to send her a message. But the way he was looking at her, he wasn't threatening, wasn't carrying mixed signals. His aloofness was some sort of defense against a deeper emotion toward her. Despite the non-threat, it ruffled her feathers that someone could point out her flaws so easy. If she wanted that in a conversation she'd sit down for a girl's night out with Cameron.

"Oh … so in your "expert opinion" When do Spartan Queen's look their best?" She asked with a snap to her voice.

But for some reason, he seemed to be miles away the minute she asked him the question. In his mind she could see he was replaying a locked away memory. His eyes slowly fell to sorrow and for instant he was somewhere else. It was apparent to the woman in the regal costume that her companion was thinking of a real person.

"Under the light of the Grecian moon, sleeping … with a smile from a happy dream." When he spoke, it was quiet and in a moment of reenvisioning it in his mind, Sarah could say he was enchanted all over again. There was a long pause in which Sarah watched him, fascinated by the setting he described.

But eventually he side eyed her, a ghost of a grin, and a quirk of an eyebrow. The moment of real emotion was buried forever. She glared and shook her head.

"Do you and your fantasy girl need a moment … because I wouldn't mind a hot dog." She fought to hide the smile behind surliness of a woman exasperated with him.

"Nah …" He shrugged. "We have forever." His voice cracked with some foreign sense of seriousness. At this point Sarah wasn't sure what to believe about the man. Was he teasing her? Was he giving her something real about himself? She was colored intrigued, because this might be the only conversation were someone was trying to hide something a lot harder than she was.

She turned to watch the crowd of housewives and their cubicle worker husbands as they mingled and gossiped about each other, a few conversations about other things, like when Los Angeles was going to get a NFL franchise again. But she couldn't get that story of the Spartan Queen out her head, and for once she had the upper hand in the conversation.

"So what about her?"

"Who?"

"Fantasy girl?"

He gave a devious smirk. "As in what's happening to her now, in my head? I'd rather not say, there's children around." He moved his eyes back and forth to the crowd. Sarah gave a long sigh and fixed him with a glare.

"The real girl?"

"You mean what happened to the real Spartan Queen?" He gave her a look that said she needed to check reality.

"I didn't say the queen, I said the girl, the girl you were thinking about just now." She replied sharply.

He smiled at her, but responded to the almost maternal snap in her voice. "She wasn't a queen … yet. She was engaged to her uncle." He sighed.

"Her uncle?"

"Spartans" he made it sound like a curse as he shook his head.

Sarah sighed when she saw he was going to continue with this Spartan crap. "I bet it was a culture shock for them, someone from the future? Or did you blend in?" she played along.

He scoffed. "If you thought I was going to surrender my clothes to wear those ridiculous red speedos, you have another thing coming." He was other a really good liar, or he was insane. This was obviously a made up story at its best. Sarah being a time traveler herself, knew that there was no going back once arriving in a time and space. He may talk bullshit, but it was entertaining bullshit, and she could use a good distraction from tonight.

He shrugged his free shoulder. "I loved her, but she belonged there, I didn't. She wanted to come but I refused to take her with me. I loved her too much to take her where I was going back too. So I captured the monster I came for and left." He made it sound so simple, when it seemed so serious in his eyes.

"Monster hunter and time traveler?"

"Well … technically the monster sort of dragged me there on accident."

"Hydra … maybe a minotaur?"

"Infinity"

"A what?"

"Infinity model … a Frankenstein killer robot built from the guts of other killer robots in the thirtieth century. It was constructed by Professor Alaric Ivo … a mad scientist with a fetish for historical ladies. "

"Really? Don't tell me his robot was just snatching women out of the past and bringing them to him?"

"You ever wonder what happened to Amelia Earhart?"

"And what, she was cleaning his house?"

"Let's just say once you see Anne Boleyn in a dirty French maid outfit and stockings you'll never read English history the same again."

"So your robot was after your Greecian queen?"

"No, it was looking for someone else … it broke into my old man's office wanting information. I fought it off and we both ended up in Sparta."

"Who was your "Killer Robot" looking for?"

Her question seemed to take her stranger by surprise, so much so that the conversation paused. The man turned to look Sarah in the eye for a long moment, before he cleared his throat and shrugged. "No one you'd be interested in." He turned back to the party avoiding her gaze.

"So how did you go from ancient Greece to the Thirtieth Century?"

"I Damaged it, and when it jumped back home for repairs I hitched a ride."

"I bet it was hard to kill."

"Temporal shielding, polymorphic arm, that turned into flame thrower, plasma canon, and taser. Take a guess."

"Temporal Shielding?"

"You fire a shotgun at it and the shot fazes out of existence in the timeline … had a time machine built inside of it." He tapped his chest absently showing where it was.

Sarah scoffed at the absurdity of the story. "Well I'm convinced." She announced.

He seemed doubtful. "Are you now?" he kept a straight face.

"Yeah, that you don't know a thing about fighting robots." She shot at him.

He tilted his head in a very familiar way that Sarah couldn't place. "Oh … and the Mary Sue waitress does, huh?" He asked point blank.

In her rush for a superior attitude, Sarah had run her mouth. Suddenly she shut down, passively looking away. "Maybe" She said in deadpan. But to her admission, he let out a good natured laugh.

"Yeah? Maybe next time I go on a time traveling robot hunt, I'll take you with me." It may have been her imagination, but Sarah could've sworn he sounded almost wistful about it.

She remained locked down when she glared at him. "Couldn't afford me." She shrugged a bare shoulder at him teasingly.

"You're right." He agreed. His tone was underlined with a sense of talking about something else within her statement. Still in a mask of surliness since her last slip up, she watched him softly.

"Whatever happened to your Spartan Princess?" She asked.

"Fell in love and married her uncle, became queen, had a kid, helped him rule when her husband died in battle." He sighed longingly. "Or so I read anyway." He gaze was a thousand miles away. In his hand he was now opening and closing his pocket watch.

Seeing him doing it, she was reminded of the time, or the lack of it. She wasn't sure how long she had been talking to him. Ten was the curfew for everyone; it was non-flexible, despite John's smartass comment about making no promises when losing time while he and Cameron were partying so hard.

"What time is it?" She asked. He stopped clicking the watch and stared at her for the first time since he side eyed her, then down to the object in his hand. "This isn't a watch." He corrected her. She leveled him with a glare that said the Joking around portion of their companionship had been worn out. He narrowed his eyes in annoyance with her and reluctantly turned the pocket watch over to her.

She was surprised that the chain that was usually supposed to attach to the belt or waist loop was actually meant to wear around your neck. The cover itself was made of thick silver that was tarnished with age, little dents scattered all over the body. She turned it over and found that there was an inscription on the back, though hard to make out through carbon scorching, like it had fallen in a fire that wasn't hot enough to melt.

**Come Back To Me **

Her eyes trailed over the words and found them oddly sad. She wanted to ask about it, but thought better of it. She pressed the top button and opened the cover, only to become very confused. There wasn't a clock inside, nor ever seemed to be. Inside was nothing but a worn out, off colored red button. She frowned and stared at it for a moment. When she turned back, she found her party mate giving her an "I told you so" look.

"What is it?" She asked.

"Your guess is as good as mine, I've had it for over ten years and I still don't know what to make of it." He seemed just as confused as her.

She shut the cover and examined it. "Where did you get it?" She rubbed at the inscription.

He sighed. "It was my old man's … he's had it long before I was born." He shrugged. "Wore it everywhere, said it was his lucky charm." He replied indifferently.

"Ever ask?"

"Wouldn't say."

"Your mom?"

"Nope …"

"Why didn't you ask her?"

"Never knew her."

Sarah for some odd reason stared up from the watch. She wasn't sure why she reacted the way she did at the statement. She knew a lot of single parents, she was one of them. But those were fatherless children, like her boy, like her. It never occurred to her that there were children that didn't have a mother, she couldn't even imagine, but maybe that was because she never knew her father. When people asked her about him, he always changed. He was a laid off mattress factory worker, a hard veteran, a corrupt police captain. It always changed and she always believed it, because … who said it couldn't be true?

But she knew she had touched a nerve, because his face was starting to narrow in dislike of the big production she had made out of it. But she couldn't help it … for reasons, again, she couldn't explain. An empathetic part of her felt like this was somehow her fault.

"What happened?"

"Don't know."

"You don't?"

"No I don't."

"You never …"

He grinded his teeth. "Jesus Harold Christ on Rubber Crunches" He snapped at her. "Should I get a lawyer before you question me further?" She would admit that her questioning had become very aggressive for no particular reason. Even without her overly aggression in question it was obvious that being a motherless child was a sore subject even for someone their age. Her cheeks flushed, Sarah looked down, she wasn't sure what just happened, but she was getting weird and she knew it. Her companion gave a deep calming breath and shook his head.

"My dad was a cold, calculating, obsessive, depressed, drunk, who's favorite past time was to brood in the dark of his office surrounded by glass cases filled with manikins dressed in peoples clothes from his past, a bottle of scotch, his journal, and that pocket watch. There were many things that my dad and I didn't talk about … my mother was the cardinal amongst them." He sighed and fixed her with a withering glare that she swore he took from her. "Look, I don't know her, never have and pretty sure I never will … not a name, not a picture, The only goddamn thing I know is that she can bounce bullets … My dad didn't talk about her and I don't want to either… is that okay, inspector?" He asked in with exasperation.

For a moment, Sarah wondered how they had got here in the first place. Strange motivations to have strange conversations, she thought. They matched as much as they didn't, the chemistry was potent, but poisoned by secrets the two were hiding from each other. At any other point in any other life she knew that this man and she would be very close. But right now she had to get away from him, away from this situation. So she did what she always did … found a reason to get mad.

She threw his watch at him harshly and without another word, lifted her skirt and stormed away. The entire rush to get away, she felt his eyes on her back. She didn't stop till she had reached the refreshment's table, where her costume was once again the center of attention from the new comers. All she wanted to do was tear it off, but then that would create a whole host of different kind of problems. She looked over her shoulder to look back at the man … that she didn't even have a name for. He had his back to the column now, head thumped against the concrete. He said something to himself with his eyes closed. But the minute her gaze fell on him, he opened them and found her amongst the crowd. She turned back toward the table, taking a tortilla chip and biting into it, practicing the fake civil smile to a group of housewives watching her.

"What's up with you?"

She turned to find Derek. She didn't care where he had been or why she sent him away … she had never been happier to see him. Around his neck was a Hawaiian lay that he didn't seem to acknowledge. She gave a big grin at it.

"What is that?" She turned her attention away from whatever it was she was doing with that stranger. Derek looked down and shrugged with indifferent ease that only Derek Reese could.

"I don't think Kacy realizes that costume party is a theme, and that she didn't need another one." He handed her a red plastic cup. She looked down into the full cup and realized that he had gone to get her something to drink when she sent him away. There was a soft smile on her lips when she looked up, but Reese was looking around, maybe looking for John.

"Punch?"

"Soda … Dr. Pepper. Someone spiked the punch."

"My hero …" She took a sip of her soda and offered it back to him. He took it with a nod and took a sip from it after a moment he handed her back the soda and sighed. "Wanna another hotdog?" He asked flashing eyes behind them. Sarah gave him a soft look and nodded. "Sure …" She shrugged.

Watching him go she realized what she should've with her stranger. That these people they don't know what she did, they live in there cozy little homes, in their pocket universes. Sarah couldn't relate to them, never could even before her rebirth. Seeing Derek, she understood why he was with her, not off mingling or doing his own thing. He felt the same as she did, Sarah was the only one he could talk too and not hold back, not fake how he was feeling, same as she felt about him.

On the air a horrid smell of mold and dried blood filled the air around her. Sarah frowned and scrunched her face up, trying hard not gag at the thick smell. Behind her there was a clatter of utensils and thud of feet on manicured grass.

She whirled to find Derek, his entire front wet with liquid the hotdogs were floating in. He looked as if he was about to explode. Opposite him was a robust clown in top hat and tails who was laughing at the oldest Reese boy. Raising a fist, he was about strike when the clown made a guilty noise, he reached inside a pocket, extracting a dusty and aged plastic flower, giving it to Derek. With a control of his anger the soldier took the flower. The clown motioned for Derek to smell it. With a calming breath he moved the flower to his face. Just as he went in for a sniff the flower squirted root beer onto the soldier's face.

**AHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHA! **

Dropping the flower, the soldier wiped his face with his coat sleeve and turned with a vengeance on the clown. He took an angry swing at the obese man only to hit the air missing the smudgy makeup individual who took a fighters stance, hopping up and down rotating his fists in front of his face in a campy mocking of the Tech-Com junior officer.

Seeing red, Derek threw an upper cut at the clown to which it dodged easily and bounced in a circle around him making high pitched growls, as if making fun of Derek. He next tossed a trained elbow at the fat man, but all he did was twist out of control, crashing backwards and over the refreshments table. Landing next to Sarah, Staggering to his feet, Derek was about to advance on the high pitched chuckling when the stranger from earlier appeared and locked the others solder's arms behind him in a restraining manner. Catching up mentally Sarah rushed toward him.

"Hey … HEY, Reese … that's enough!" Sarah pressed her hands and chest into Derek getting him to look into her eyes as he struggled against the man's hold. Getting caught in hardened emerald orbs and the calming touch of Sarah's body on his chest, Derek slowly settled.

A hand tapped Sarah's bare shoulder and offered a handkerchief next to Sarah's face. Without looking she took it with a grunt to substitute a thank you. But when she pulled on it, she found a red rag tied to it, then a yellow, then purple.

_**AHAHAHAHAHA!**_

It was the laugh that made Sarah's insides drop, her belly clenched and her face went numb. Memories flooded back to her, memories that she swore she didn't have, not anymore. She fought herself for seconds, that girl wasn't her, She was Sarah Connor, not Sarah the spoiled brat, Sarah mama's beautiful little princess, Sarah the jezebel, hopping up and down in her short skirt making a proper ladies think improper unclean deviant thoughts, urges that had to be met with Sarah while the manor slept.

Slowly she turned and came to the horror she hadn't remembered, didn't want to remember. His handsome face was fat now, like a chipmunk , not the way it used to be. His teeth, his once so perfect teeth were horrible, plaque ridden, yellow, and filed to razor fangs like beast. He wore the same Victorian top hat and tail suit, his great, great grandfather's fine wear … Sarah's great, great grandfather's …

When the Clown was faced with Sarah his laugh cut short. He choked on it, like food unchewed in his throat. Green eyes bore into his small dark pupils and much like Sarah, the clown experienced flashes of memories longed to be forgotten. His eyes rolled back as they swirled in his bent mind. Hands gripped the brim of his top hat and he pulled down on it like trying to close a lid.

"AAAAAAAAHHHHHH!"

His scream was ear splitting and truly more terrifying than any laugh he had. The obese man hissed and snarled at Sarah, like she was some nightmare projected into land of the conscious. Sarah absently strode forward to touch him, a gentle hand for a face, just to confirm he was real. But when she advanced, the clown backed away from her like a man being threatened by a wild animal. Turning back he let out one last ear shattering scream before running away, bowling over people on his way out.

The party halted and Sarah stood alone in the middle of the yard her eyes wide. She didn't realize she was shaking till her brown coated stranger strode past her, toward a shined object that must have fallen out of the clowns pocket, it looked like a digital recorder of some sort. He knelt to pick it up.

She felt a comforting hand on her shoulder. With a whirl she found it was Derek. Her eyes found his hand and stared harshly as it rested on her bare shoulder. Seeing the action he quickly removed it, though she didn't mean for him to remove it.

"What the hell was that all about?" he asked. His gaze was out toward the open fence that the clown had made a break for. Sarah followed it, giving a shudder at memories.

A pretty little girl in a white lace dress with mountains of raven curls pinned back in a bow, and a dolly under arm standing in a white marble garden of roses staring at a naked familiar preteen boy crouched in the corner, dirty and muttering, rocking back and forth laughing through sobs. She remembered the girl's mother, a beautiful woman with long blond locks and bright green eyes tell her to go play with her dollies, pushing her away as servants came to attend to him. She would never forget the sight of her favorite nanny's blood wash over a bush of white roses when she got to close and the boy slashed her throat with garden sheers. The boy was laughing manically as security men tackled him to the grass. No matter how hard she tried, no matter how many times she told herself that she was Sarah Connor, the little girl would never forget that laugh as long as she lived.

Flicking her gaze down, she found her stranger still crouched, a metallic rectangle with a black light in hand. He seemed to be studying it with a detective's analytical eye. After a moment, he pushed back his leather coat at his side and Sarah saw that he was wearing a dark leather utility belt buckled at his waist. The pouches were big enough to carry pistol magazines, but some of the pouches didn't look to be carrying magazines. Holstered at his side was something familiar that she could spot almost anywhere. It was a chrome Colt. 45 Custom. It almost matched the sleek pistol that Cameron had given John, except that the one at the man's side looked a great deal older, scarred, with old tape wrapped around the rubber grip of the weapon.

"The one night I don't wear the lens …" The man sighed standing to full height, keeping one last warning gaze toward the fence opening. When he turned back, Sarah watched him slip the piece of tech in a utility pouch. He walked up to Sarah and almost without thinking, place a hand on her arm gently. "You alright?" He asked. She nodded absently and was surprised how she didn't flinch at the touch. It was also surprising how comfortable the touch was.

"Hey …"

Both Sarah and the man broke the stare down, turning to find Derek watching the two of them. He didn't seem territorial, but more confused looking between the two of them.

"Derek?" The man asked almost surprised.

The soldier from the future turned indifferent eyes toward the raven haired stranger. "Yeah?" He asked easily looking him over. The stranger narrowed eyes and seemed as if waiting for him to say something. "You don't, know who I am?" He asked cautiously.

Derek searched his eyes and shook his head. "Know a lot of people … don't know you." He said bluntly.

At the statement the man seemed puzzled. "Strange … well alright then, looks like you have it under control." He announced to them. He began walking away.

Sarah took a step forward. "Where are you going?" like everything about their interaction, she wasn't sure why she cared.

He didn't look back, answering cryptically while touching his coat that covered the pouch where he placed the Clown's device.

"There are a lot of questions … questions that need answering."

* * *

"That clown is toast …"

Sarah gave Derek an amused scowl as he sat on Kacy's kitchen island while she cleaned his face with a piece of the train of her dress that she had been dying to rip off. Despite the fighting words, his tone and heart wasn't in the threat as he felt Sarah's hands trail his face with only a thin cloth.

Tossing the wet cloth on the table, Sarah touched Derek's face just to make sure she hadn't missed a spot. Her eyes soon became lost as her hand began to wander through his scratchy stubble. The scrapping of the hardened facial hair against her surprisingly smooth palms gave a mutual tingle of pleasure to both.

Derek looked into concentrated green eyes, feeling compelled to move on the feelings swirling in his chest. He reached and took her naked waist with gentle care and almost on instinct he began to stroke her cool skin with his thumbs. This caused her to look at him in confusion as she felt like she was being pulled in a thousand different directions. Cautiously she cupped his cheek with her other hand, and to her surprise he turned into the touch. Then subconsciously the two's faces started to close the gap of separation. Neither knew what got into each other and there was almost a sense of stepping outside as their lips brushed. There was a pause before the plunge between them as if each wanted the others permission.

"Am I interrupting something?"

Being brought back to reality like a plane crash, both parties separated quickly finding Kacy watching them with a towel in hand.

"No … God … no." Sarah said a little too panicky, stepping away from the soldier who released her smooth sides quickly.

"I can come back." The pregnant woman said with a lifted eyebrow, tossing her thumb over her shoulder.

"No …" Derek grunted with a fogged mind, trying hard to get a hold of himself, he slid off the Island.

Sarah crossed her arms trying to desperately to control a hungry need in her that was awakened. It was dark and powerful, she had read about this kind of fiery passion before in sappy romance novels she used to love as a teen, but she never thought that in a million years she would be actually feeling it. There was an awkward silence between the three people at picnic table as two of the three where trying really hard not to lay their hands on one another.

"Okay … well." The pirate cleared her throat. "I'm going to be outside if anyone needs me …" With a small nod the woman walked away, leaving Derek and Sarah alone. Both were scared to even look at each other in the event of losing control.

"I need to go change." Derek cleared throat. Sarah nodded her head.

"You should." She responded with a clenched hiss.

Derek sidled past Sarah on his way to the gate, but stopped when one of his hands brushed her bare back. At the touch Sarah sucked in her breath. Both paused as his hand lingered. Then once again, like being directed by an unacknowledged part of his brain, Derek began to run his hand over her bare back, becoming addicted to the feeling of her now-hot skin under his palms. With her eyes rolling to the back of her head, Sarah gripped the table and shuddered at the gentle trails over her exposed skin.

She bit down hard on her lip when he reached her lower back. Then cautiously, he ran his hands down her sculpted hips to her thighs. She made a fragile whimper as she felt the hands stop just as they were about to enter between her thighs.

"Christ … I need to go!" Derek shoved his hands in his coat pockets.

"Agreed …" Sarah sputtered. There was a pause between the two as they stared into one another's eyes.

"Yeah!" Both said at once and went separate ways quickly.

* * *

"You ready?"

"Yes"

"You know what to do?"

"Yes"

"Do I know what to do?"

"Do you?"

"Wait …"

John was on his third cup of punch and he was feeling great, scratch that, he was feeling awesome. But he seemed to having trouble remembering things.

"Remind me again?" John squinted. Cameron looked off to the distance a moment as if trying to remembering what they were about to do.

"You were going to show me how to do something involving the use of lunar gravity on earth." She answered matter-of-factly.

John looked at her with a dazed expression that was only missing the appearance of drool on the edge of his mouth.

"I swear … it just the way you say things, Angel." John sighed downing the rest of his punch. Cameron gave a small interested lift of her eyebrows. John smacked his lips with a giggle.

"John …"

"Huh?" he turned back to Cameron who was tilting her head at him.

"You called me _Angel._" She frowned in confusion.

"So …" he looked around a moment and hung his empty cup on the back of the stinger of a soccer mom's bee costume.

"Why …?" she asked watching the unaware lady walk away.

John paused and then smiled cheekily. "Because of what happened to your head …" he said happily. Cameron continued to look lost. "You remember on our first day of school you said you fell … hard." He chuckled.

"Yes …" she nodded.

"Well I know why you fell." John sighed. The girl looked shocked at his statement.

"How …?" she had an innocent fascination to his statement that melted John's heart. He closed the gap and boldly kissed Cameron on the nose.

"_It's a long drop from heaven …" _he whispered and strolled away. The nylon clad cyborg processed the confusing conversation a moment trying to decipher what it meant. Several moments later a small smile formed on her face when it finally came to her. John came back to Cameron and grabbed her hand.

"Woops … I almost forgot something." He said clumsily and tugged her with him.

Cameron suddenly remembered why she liked drunken John.

* * *

**Author's Notes**

_**What? What is that? Does … Does Sarah know who the Clown is … could they be relatred? Tune in to find out. **_

_**The names of the old Victorian families coming to Los Angeles is important to the plot, so keep an eye on that.**_

_**Don't worry, the story of Professor Ivo and the T-infinity is not important to the plot, Ryan is remembering an old adventure from when he was younger. A bit of reference to Lord of the Rings when Bilbo tells the tale of the Trolls at the party. **_

_**And yes … the Spartan Queen is exactly what you think it is.**_

_**I would like to everyone to appreciate that this chapter almost killed me. What people don't realize is that editing and rewriting is actually mind numbing work at some points. I would almost rather write a whole new chapter sometimes rather than rework and edit previous work. **_

_**Next Chapter: Interlude Part II – The Royal Family Brydon/Paris 2009**_


	6. Interlude: Part II

**Interlude: Part II**

_Paris 2009_

The house sat on the outskirts of Paris. At the foot of its wrap around porch lay countryside that had seen many battles fought of four wars in three hundred years. It was unknown why the two story country manor, with the white paint job and blue shutters, had been stumbled upon by so many armies of the past. Modest and unknown to the dusty archives, the home had been the crossroads to history. Many famous faces, grim and brooding, had chosen the manor for their temporary abode. Napoleon, Prince Fredrick, Rommel, and Patton had all slept in its rooms. Each with many decisions to make that would affect the world. This time was no different.

Behind the stone wall perimeter, with gaps filled with a trellis of wild flowers, sat a yard. It was filled with green luscious grass, that was soft and stringy, rather than with sharp blades. It was a comfortable yard for bare feet, not that it was the point, but it was an advantage to those who needed the grip.

In front of the home with the double blue doors, brass knockers, and wide white stone stairway, tropical fruit with coarse hairy coving over hard brown shells were flying hard and fast. They were silent cannonballs screaming into a sharp blade that cut through the thick scented air with merciless precision. There was a swish and the sound of liquid splattering on a concrete walkway, two more, and still one swish, followed by liquid thud. Their shells crunching as they landed on grass.

"Again"

SQUWISH!

"Your focus must not be on the fruit, it must be on me … on what you've learned and what I've taught you."

SQUWISH!

"No, not on the lessons … on you, what I've learned of you."

"Yes, of me … and …"

SQUWISH!

"And on what I think you're going to do next."

"Very good … but!"

SQUWISHSQUWIS! THUMP!

"Grhaah"

"Be aware that nothing is for certain … a break in pattern, must always be on your mind."

A young man dressed in a white t-shirt and loose black training pants fell to a knee in the grass. Along the concrete walkway that led to the gardens in the backyard, a coagulated puddle of clear coconut milk flowed in rivers into the grass. Next to the sweat dampened man, a long curved katana sword was stabbed into the ground. The youth's frame leaned against it, holding himself steady with all his weight supported. Both his hands were taped and the free one held his rib. A lock of sweat soaked hair fell in his face as he panted, green eyes sharp with pain.

"You fight well, young warrior … but fighting is only part of your training … and not the most important."

John Connor snuck a glance up to follow the path of an old Asian man walking toward him, with disciplined hands behind his back. He was clean shaven, with a patch of liver spots on his shaven head, and jowls of loose skin underneath his neck from age. His frail frame was clothed in a blue and white trimmed wrap-around robe and baggy, loose white pants. His small, almost black colored eyes, obscured by wrinkles, were covered by dark sunglasses.

"I know …" John replied shortly.

But to his tone, the old man only chuckled. "How long did you last?" He asked.

"Three hours." John responded.

The man made an amused noise. "Yes …" he drew out in a mutter. "But your problem is that you became too relaxed on patterns, you paced yourself, and you turned off your mind and let the body take control." He shook his head. "I all but told you what I was going to do, yet you were elsewhere. Pressing business?" The question wasn't if there was pressing business, the question was what was the pressing business.

"None of yours." He hissed, standing to full height, using the sword to help.

The man made a low disappointed grumble in the back of his throat. John could hear the claps of his wood-soled sandals on the wet walkway as he wandered away.

"You have the will, Young Warrior… the will to make a difference in this world." He said in a sincere voice. "To be all that is expected of you and more." He nodded to himself in assurance. "But you will never get there." He relied with a sigh.

The spiked haired youth pulled the sword from the ground with a hard tug, the sound of a sharp metal ring echoed through the yard. "Is that right?" He asked.

The man once again made an amused noise at the youth's abrasive answer. "No, not as you are." He shook his head.

"And, what am I?"

"Held back …" The man wasn't watching John, but at the sunset shown in dark orange and purple that flared out over the darkening sky, painting the clouds. His gaze was drawn to the endless fields of blood red poppies that surrounded the home. "You fight with calculation, you corner your enemy, but you do not finish him. You know how to defeat him, but you refuse to take the steps necessary in order to achieve it." He shook his head. "You hold back in a fight for which you must give everything. A great sword, with a dull blade." He chastised.

John Connor shifted his jaw and stared at his sword. "Dulled by what?" He asked.

"Love."

Emotions welling deep inside him, John let out a long drawn breath, releasing the anxiety of all his feelings from the images that flashed in his brain. The old man turned his head to the side, his gaze drawn. It was as if he wanted confirmation from his student that he had pinpointed the cause. When he saw the anxiety of discovery flash across the youth's face he nodded, returning to his view past the property.

"You have a duty to the people, Young Warrior. You have a duty to protect them. Love is the death of duty and the nemesis of the protector. When a man loves another, he knows nothing of his duty when what he cherishes is not what he must. A post abandoned for the care of one … forgotten is the many. Moves a warrior must take to destroy evil, are nullified when weighing the outcome to the effects to the one he selfishly guards for himself not to the results that would save the many he should cherish. That is what slows you."

John gritted his teeth; this was a lecture he had heard many times in the last few years. He was tired of hearing it, tired of being told that what he wanted was selfish. What did they expect from him? What did they think he was? He was a man, he was flesh and blood, he was human. How could he not wake up in the morning and think of her … to think of the girl waiting for him, past these walls. She was all he had, the only thing he had.

"Why?" he asked. "Why shouldn't I love?" He asked.

"Because you were not made for it." The old master replied smooth as silk.

Green eyes flashed dangerously. "I was not made for it?" he asked rhetorically.

"Your destiny lies upon a different path. You were born to fight, born to protect, born to save … love is for you to safeguard, not to hold for yourself."

"Am I not a man?"

"Yes, and that is your weakness …"

"I thought love …"

"A mortal man may fall in love; a mortal man may die for love. A man may go to a diner and fall for his waitress. He may try hard to fit himself into her life where he does not fit. Her rejection sends him away and he changes his life because of her. All the while, his soul mate was the fry cook."

"I don't understand?"

"Love destroys. Love is for those who know not of the path they must take."

"You're saying free will is dangerous."

"No! Never!" He snapped. "The unknown is the danger, Young Warrior, and that is the lesson." He calmed himself.

"You're saying I shouldn't even try?"

"I'm saying you have a rare gift … you know what your fate is, there is no mystery or indecision. Your life is laid out before you, while the rest of us grasp in the dark of a long hallway. Which door should we chose? Should we settle for one, or keep going? This is not your curse. Be relieved in your gift, and be happy in your purpose, Young Warrior."

"There is no fate, but what we make for ourselves."

The old man chuckled. "Yes?" he asked with a thoughtful grunt in the base of his throat. "Then how were you born? How did you come to being? Why did your mother train you?" His questions only made John angrier. "Why are you here? Why do you train?" He continued.

"I!" John stopped him. "I don't know …" he was filled with emotion, but didn't know what it was. A white hot anger straddled in the grief of all logic of his life. He had nothing to say, no answers to counter. This simply was his life; it had always been his life. He could quit, he could run, but to where? To what purpose when he knew what was coming. Somehow the martial arts master's gift, felt like a trap.

"You're afraid."

"I fear nothing!"

"You fear the future, the man you must become, and the darkness that seeps into this world … into you. Why?"

"I don't know."

"You fear, because of what you were told. Fear of what men from years in the future have told of you and your actions yet to come. You are unsure you can live up to them, unsure you can touch what they've seen. Yet, you don't realize that what you fear is what must become your shield."

"Shield?"

"Your enemy has many weaknesses, but you choose not to see them, through the deeds in which he has done. You don't see through the bodies, the destruction, the fear of others. You must become your enemy."

"I have to become Skynet?"

"No, you must become a myth." He finally turned to face John. "To shield yourself you must become more than just a man in the minds of those who you command, and to those who wish to destroy you. John Connor must not be just a General of men and women, he must become all seeing, all knowing, an idea, a prayer … ah, a legend." The old man's face was stern as he spoke. "To let your enemy believe you are anything less, will only let him destroy you with a man's weakness." He sighed when he saw the stubbornness in his pupil's eyes.

"To love is to be vulnerable, is the lesson?" He asked in agitation.

The man smirked grimily. "To love is human, to hold is to lose, and to let go is to save both of you." He began to walk toward John, on his way back inside his dojo.

"You don't know her …"

"I know you and I know what you'd do for her … and if she stays long enough, so will those who wish to do you harm."

John wasn't angry, he should be, but he wasn't. He felt afraid of all that he heard from the master. He had always been assured that she was different, that he could always count on her being able to take care of herself. A love made of steel couldn't be harmed. Now the cracks started to appear on the surface and he wasn't sure what he could do to protect a girl who couldn't break.

"It's not like that … I … I built her … I sent her back. She's here for me. She saves my life." He argued with a silent old man, who had said nothing on the matter.

When small slanted eyes fixed themselves on the youth through sunglasses, he seemed expressionless. "No more do I have to teach you, Young Warrior … your final trial is before you." He placed a comforting hand on John's shoulder.

"When?" he asked.

The older man seemed almost sad. "I've been a Master for forty years of my life, young warrior … I've studied for many and many of them … learned much and lost even more. But through my years I've learned one insurmountable fact … Life has no time table." He patted his shoulder.

John blinked and watched him shuffle away and up the stairs toward the doors. However the man stopped at the open blue door and gave deep regretful huff. He didn't look a John.

"This great love … she protects you?"

"Always"

He made an unreadable growl, face darkened by the coming night. "If she is true to her love and her purpose … You need only to trust her and her judgment when your trial ends ... She'll know what to do."

"How do we achieve victory?" He asked.

"A trial is not combat, Young Warrior … there is no winner or loser. It's a presentation of facts to a situation in which a decision must be made."

He said no more, disappearing into the manor house, the door slipping shut with a click. John was left to himself in the quiet of the French evening. Afar the last of the evening insects ceased their chirping and the dim light of fireflies illuminated the trellis vines on the guarded walls.

There was something confining about the small space that made the young man feel trapped inside. Like he was confined in a bottle he couldn't escape from. The plush grass crunched underfoot as he paced away toward the entrance. Bare soles of feet padded over cobble stone as he made his way to the front gate and opened it. The rusty squeak was the last sound of the dying day as he left the home for the open field of flowers.

On the horizon the last of the days light spread across the open sky like a layer of honey in a jar of another liquid. Above the purple separator the night sky twinkled with the field of stars thrown across the sky like the arts and craft of a small child who discovered glitter.

His mind was on a thousand things- the present, future, and what was and will never be again. He always knew it was a hard road, but he had never traveled it alone before. His mother had been there most of it, there when he needed her, she had lived for him, she had been his rock. Then there were the years he didn't have her, alone in the homes of strangers. For all his talk later in life about wanting a normal life he knew he hated it. He would forever carry the shame of letting his mother suffer thinking that he had ever had one after her imprisonment. He hated it, he hated those ignorant people waking up and going to jobs or school, a meager life for a meager future. It wasn't like the adventures he had with his mom, and even with everyone telling him that he was raised in a cultist's fantasy world, he knew deep down that everything those people held dear was a lie that would turn to ash in their hands one day.

John Connor knew that there was no normal life for him. He knew too much, seen too much, done too much to ever delude himself that anything would ever be different in his world. But what John couldn't accept was being in this world of death, destruction on his own. His vengeful spirit and need for revenge of all he lost tamed by a curious soul that shouldn't exist and a beautiful face stolen.

But as these thoughts ran through his head, he could feel eyes upon him. They judged him, they looked down on him and did not approve. In his heart filled with love, John felt a stab of regret. In the back of his mind a cold thought bullied its way into the back of every memory of love. It was the thought of abandoning all that was sacrificed, the vengeance that was silently promised in a cold wasteland of ice and hot metal tracks. The more he loved, the more he was ashamed.

"It's different." He said to the sky. "I know what you would want me to do … but it's different now. She's not … she's not what you wanted me to think she was. She's more." He begged. "I can't do it alone … I'm … I'm not trying to replace you, but I can't live with this anymore. This pain and anger, this hatred … and when she's around … It doesn't hurt, not like it used to when I was blind to her. I don't feel lost when she's with me." He shook his head. "I haven't forgotten, but it has to be different … I need it to be different. Please mom … Derek … you have to understand." The poppies brushed his legs when the wind kicked up suddenly, harshly.

He dropped to his knees as if begging for forgiveness amongst the waving flowers in the green field and reached inside his white t-shirt and pulled a silver pocket watch from around his neck. Its unblemished, unmarked, silver body shimmered in the light of the stars. He closed his eyes and lowered his head as if to make a silent prayer.

"I need her."

* * *

The small ballet company out of Yorkshire England had nothing but a mediocre thirty years since Annabel Noble, a former chorographer from Nottingham, put all her savings into producing her own performances. She had somehow kept the business going, through the failures of her original works and the near misses of their performances of the classics, Sleeping Beauty, Orpheus, and her favorite Giselle. After all the years, the lost marriages, and the bitter daughters that only visit her for the sake of the grandchildren Annabel was starting to think that it was time to close shop. Then she would go to the local pub and reminisce about the failures, like they were the high school glory years. There she was sitting in the studio looking at the script of Giselle and tearing up thinking about her dreams of taking the Noble company to London and wowing the royal family, and how it was such a faraway notion then, and impossible now … but that's when she walked in.

"Beautiful girl" was the first thing Ms. Noble thought, a little odd, the way she walked was stiff. Being a dancer and director almost all her life it was the first thing she noticed about everyone. But there was something in particular about this girl. She had asked if she was hiring, and Annabel had laughed at her. Some people could get punched in the face for that, but she was drunk and … ah what the hell, physical pain was a lot better than the pain she usually felt. But the girl only tilted her head and seemed confused. The owner didn't really know many special needs people, but she figured it shouldn't be the condition she should judge the girl on; not that she knew one way or the other, but there was something off about her, to be honest.

The girl introduced herself, told her that she had just come from Paris; the man she loved was in the middle of training. Annabel asked if she was talking about University and she said no. What he was doing didn't matter as much as the way she talked about him. Who described anyone as "the man I love" anymore … or ever? Mr. Noble was a philosophy major and a poet who had said that her dancing inspired him … right into her understudy's tights. It wasn't much, but she had an angel's face and when Ms. Noble heard she needed a job to support herself and learn, well, why not?

Now, only four months later, here they were. The lights of the stage were dimmed on the setting in front of the crowds of hundreds packed into the old Metropolitan Theater in the heart of the glint and cobblestone of old Paris. If there ever was an occasion that needed formal wear it was this setting and this performance. The women came in the latest fashions straight from the runways down the block their husbands in their best penguins. They all came now, actors, statesmen, tourists. They all came to the theater, just to catch a glimpse of _her_.

It was a sensation that was sweeping the culture and art communities of the west. Annabel Noble the choreographer, the genius, bringing her star to the City of Lights, to the jewel of romance. It didn't get better than that. Those who enjoyed art came for the poetry, the feel. Those who came for other reasons just wanted to catch a glimpse of _her, _the chameleon of dance. No matter what she did, no matter what part she played … it was flawless. She was slender, beautiful, angelic … she was perfect.

When the curtains went up and the music swelled the opening crescendos of the final act the theater went dead silent. The lead dancer twirled, toga over tights and slippers. He danced to ominous music, under his arm was a harp. Behind him a girl appeared in the shadows. A few clapped, others sucked in their breath. She had appeared on the stage with a prance and a twirl, without missing a step she mimicked her lead's steps. She wore a short satin gown, her long dark hair in ringlets and her golden flecked eyes marked by a dark eye shadow to represent the gloom of Hades lair. She was like a beacon of light in the dreary setting. But the male lead continued on. He plucked his harp and motioned her to follow.

Her beauty and light beckoned him to look at her, his love, his life. But he danced on, leading her across the stage while all around them the other dancers, dressed in torn and drab clothing of the dead created the perimeter. Again and again the beauty chased after him, yet the harp player would not look at her. There was a great tension in the room as the music built up. The audience couldn't fathom how this man, this mortal, could not look at her. People who had seen this performance in London couldn't imagine only gazing upon it, upon her, just once were sucked in again. The music climaxed, and the beauty hung back for just a second, and as it hit its peak the male dancer succumbed to his humanity and love … and turned to look at her.

The occupants of the red velvet chairs below the stage went quiet; younger audience members gasped as if this was some thriller in an American movie theater. Above, in one of the box seats covered by red velvet, surrounded by the polished mahogany, lined with a golden frame of the old theater, a man with sharp blue eyes and a walking cane with a twin eagle head was transfixed on the girl. Sharp blue eyes, chipped from the cold ice of a tragic life watched her without blinking. He was possessed with a madness of need and longing that filled his love sickened gaze, which was drawn to the performance.

On stage there was no music, no sound, all the background dancers held their stance, slowly melting away as a bright light shined on the lovers. The girl walked gracefully toward him, her hand outstretched toward her husband. He reached for her, suddenly the lights to the stage shut off around them. The theater went pitch black, and in the darkness the orchestra swelled to a climatic dark noise that frightened everyone back into reality. When the lights returned the girl was gone, gone forever, Hades' slave till the end of time. No music played when the lead fell to the stage, his harp broken as he lay to die. The curtains draped on the scene and it was over.

For a long moment there was a pause from the audience as they all sat in their soft seats. Each one looking straight forward, collecting their thoughts and emotions from the scene they had just seen. Slowly the clapping began, like a small rock clacking from a high place, a pebble, loosened a rock, and several rocks later it was a boulder. A thunderous applause suddenly beckoned the theater to stand and shout for a curtain call.

A tall, red haired woman with a thick middle in a cream mermaid dress stood in front of the crimson curtain and bowed to their crowd. Many laughed at her, because she knew as did they what they wanted. Annabel motioned to someone out of eyeshot adjacent to the curtains. She hurried off the stage as the curtains parted and Orpheus's bride stood in the middle of the stage. The audience exploded and suddenly flowers were thrown on stages. Roses of every color, lilies, some real, some fake. Through it all, she remained blank eyed at the love being shown to her, even though she smiled, she seemed blank.

Her stony, emotionless eyes scanned the crowds as if looking for someone. They were hawk like and precise, scanning the audience, a ghost of hope crossed her features, like a little girl looking for the approval of someone. As she searched the boxes above, integrated into the gothic columns of gold, she paused. Golden-flecked brown eyes met the sharp blue ones that had never stopped watching her. This wasn't the first time she had seen them, but it was starting to gather her notice that she had been seeing them too much lately, and by lately she meant since York. It was the same old man, a mane of salt and pepper hair, and matching beard. The same formal tuxedo, old fashioned, yet strangely fitting to his mystique. The same walking cane, with the strange dual eagle heads, that she knew she'd seen before on some distant battlefield, but unable to search where in her mind.

Their eye lock lasted till the curtain was pulled and he was obscured by the soft velvet of crimson and gold trim. Once covered many people appeared all around her from trap doors under the stage, or harnessed on ropes above, female and male in costume and slippers. They all clapped and cheered, it wasn't really for her, but more for the success of the production. She had to admit that they all had performed to the best of their abilities. She smiled to all those who did the same. She shook hands and hugged as was the custom of human celebration. But as everyone got involved with their celebration on a job well done, the girl melted away into the crowd and out of it.

The corridor to the dressing rooms of the theater were wood paneled in a rustic, late nineteenth century finish that was old but added a genuine splash of atmosphere that was potent for those around it. But for the girl she felt nothing of the atmosphere, she did her job, and searched the stands, hoping that one day soon she'd see _him_ in the crowd. She was on the precipice of the world stage in her art and all she could think of and feel in her limited experience of emotion was how incomplete she was without her purpose. While the rest of the cast and crew would celebrate and attend the parties in the lobby, shake hands with the well to do of a continent, she would sit and wait for morning when they would leave. She told Annabelle she couldn't go too far away from Paris. That wasn't what the company owner wanted to hear. The Englishwoman had told her that Monaco came only once in a lifetime, "Blokes were one in a billion". She told her that her "bloke",her purpose, was not like anyone else. The ballerina did her job and did it well, but the tension was thick, and the situation could turn dangerous. Dangerous for Annabel if she thought she could manhandle the ballerina out of the country with her. Ms. Noble wasn't aware that there were many places in the French capital that the ballerina could hide her body, and no one would know where to look.

Her dressing room was the farthest away in the maze like narrow passages of the old French Metropolitan. It was secluded and quite a bit of a distance from anyone else; Ms. Nobel didn't want anyone to bother her main attraction. She always assumed that the ballerina was a diva, when it was obvious she was projecting her fantasies on her star, who would have gladly taken a basement room. Her progress was stopped when she noticed someone waiting outside her room.

In the dim light spilled by lamp light on the walls, the figure was tall in silhouette and straight as a board in posture. There was a stillness to him, an unwavering discipline that was like a rock. His shadowed frame was clothed strangely even for Paris. He wore robes of the darkest black silks, his face covered in a burka of the same material, and yet the sash around his waist was golden with a strange curved dagger stuffed inside it.

"Hello" She offered with a voice of hospitable kindness of a courtly manner.

The man turned to face her, his robes made him indistinguishable from the shadows around him. "Good evening." His voice was a deep booming baritone with an exotic accent that fit, and yet didn't, his aesthetic.

She nodded her head. "How can I help you?" She asked with an approachable smile. Bluntly, the man's response was to shove a dry cleaning bag in her direction. She paid it no mind till she opened the door and stepped inside her dressing room. The man didn't waver, following her with his out stretched arm. "Yes?" she asked with a tilt of her head.

"My master presents this as a gift and invitation for you to join him in the lobby, where he might ask you to dine with him." He pressed the gown forward.

The girl tightened her cheek and frowned. "Thank you … I'm sure it's quite a beautiful gown, but as I said in York, London, and now in Paris, I must decline." She waited for him to responded, but he held the dress out to her.

"Do you decline?"

"I do"

The man took an aggressive step forward. "Simpering, girl … no one rejects the master thrice. No one." His next step was threatening. Brown eyes suddenly turned cold and intense, they gazed to his foot, following it up to his intense black eyes. It was silent and deadly warning that he didn't miss. He took a step back to his original position, not wanting to challenge such cold intimidating eyes of a killer that possessed a headlined angel.

"I have, and I thank you for your time."

CLICK

Closing the door on the strange man, she waited for his pride to overtake him and pound on her door in frustration, but all she heard was silence and just like London, she suspected that he had wandered. Once she was sure he was gone, she bolted her door and walked the polished wood floorboards of her dressing room. It was a lavish room, most of the furniture wasn't things had she bought, but were given to her by donors of the arts, sometimes when they talked they made her sound like a painting more than an actual ballerina. Either way, she must have given off a certain vibe because the décor of her dressing room seemed to match the rustic old world of the halls outside. The costumes were in mahogany wardrobes, the upright vanity of ivory finish, silver inlaid hand mirrors, and porcelain hair clips. People often told her she had an old soul, which she would always reply that it was fairly new and not hers originally. They laughed at the statement, she never did.

Methodically she undressed from her costume and laid it neatly for Beth, the wardrobe girl. Clad in pure white, smooth underwear that looked as if made from strips of ribbon, she strode to her vanity mirror and observed herself in the revealing light. Even with the blush and blood red lip gloss, she looked deathly pale, a bloodless unhealthy reflection, which made her make up stand in contrast. She took a moment to wipe off her black eye shadow, before she stood straight in front of her mirror. A strange sight was shown as she rubbed a hand over the silky skin of her bare stomach that seemed to have the only normal and healthy complexion on her whole body. She rubbed her navel gently and looked closer, realizing that her usually taut and flawless belly was starting to swell. It only meant that she didn't have much time left before she had to confront the uncertainty of a future she was creating. She concentrated on her belly and rubbed it gently in thought, feeling what was underneath growing, forming, becoming something. A decision made in a split second of irrational emotion that would change the world, an unknown creation growing from a selfless need to cement something more than a kiss and intercourse to show her soul. She took what was deposited inside her and decided to do something she knew she shouldn't.

She turned to a side table where, next to the collection of hormone supplements, an empty blood package embossed with a Los Angeles blood bank logo lay. O-negative was written on the label, along with the date of September 2007. The girl remembered that it was the need for money to rent a home that brought the now dead woman it belonged to to the blood bank. Two years later it was now what the girl needed to help continue her construction of the unknown inside her.

"I tell you to broaden your horizons … and I swear to god, only you could take that to mean become a sensation in Europe."

The deeply familiar voice that addressed Cameron Baum was mature, and yet still youthful in its teasing. The cyborg's eyes flicked to the mirror where a tall figure stood in the shadows next to her door. She turned around quickly to find a youth in his late teens leaning back against the far wall. He had hard emerald eyes, too haunted to belong to someone so young. He had thick soft spiked hair with a lock falling limply on his forehead. His handsome face was marked with boy's stubble. He wore old jeans and a plain black t-shirt covered by Sarah Connor's "lucky" worn, dark brown, vintage male leather coat, with old buttons, and the collar popped up.

It didn't take Cameron long to realize that John had been inside her dressing room since she had returned, and had been watching her the entire time from the shadows. The look in his emotional eyes told the tale that his only point to prove to her by the action was that he wanted a moment alone to take all of her into his heart.

"John?" She asked.

The boy stepped out of the shadows and into the dim light. Cameron stepped toward him, despite the love stricken look she still reached out for his face for conformation. It had been four months since that spring day they spent in the countryside after thwarting Skynet's attempts to get its hands on old Nazi chemicals hidden in bunkers all over Paris. She remembered the sun on his face, the laughter, lying in the fields watching the clouds, as he taught her how to imagine objects within their shapes. Most of all she remembered the kisses that had healed a soul poisoned with hatred. Then there was the type of intimate intercourse that humans referred to as "making love" by a little stream in the woods. It was there amongst the physical sensations and intimate closeness that was bore in his eyes that she was taken with the irrational need to create something from it inside her.

Cameron's hand brushed familiar stubble, to which John pressed his head into her touch. She stood in the middle of her dressing room, holding his face in her hands. It took long moments for her to do anything else, before she spoke.

"You're hungry." She stated.

There was a pause between the two, as Cameron waited for a response, but all she got was silence. Suddenly water formed in the young man's eyes and a single tear fell. He began to chuckle at her statement and nodded. "You're right … oh god you're right." He wrapped his arms around her naked waist and hoisted her in the air. Cameron took in the familiar must of old leather and feminine lotion of the jacket as she wrapped her arms around his neck and, as it was customary, he spun her around just once. It was a true show of how much John had grown. Two years ago he wouldn't have been able to have lifted her for more than three seconds, now he could clearly lift her off the ground and spin her without missing a beat. When he became stationary he pressed his lips to her face, kissing cheeks, forehead, and neck, before finding her lips. Their kisses were short pecks, before a long wet one, her lips gloss moistening dry lips. When they broke apart, John pressed in face into her cheek.

This was what felt right to the cyborg. Through all the months of the stage and the lights, it didn't feel natural; the people and their praise and direction, it wasn't her. But here in this moment, in John's arms, close to him, this was the closest thing a cyborg could call home. She reached up and wiped away a tear from his face; he automatically pressed his cheek in her hand again, which earned him another kiss. He pulled her into a hard embrace, as if he was suffocating and she was oxygen. She didn't need an explanation of such an emotional reaction, she was all he had left … and he was all she ever had and ever wanted in her whole existence.

"Are you okay?" She asked. It wasn't that Cameron wasn't pleased greatly to see him or relieved even that he had missed her so much since they were separated. But even this reaction wasn't what she was expecting. Seeing that he had lost control, he composed himself with a light chuckle at the spectacle he had made.

"Why? Don't I look fine?" He joked and moved back, his hands still clasped at her satin clad hips. He held her in front of him, examining her, trying to remember everything about her again, to picture all that he missed.

"Is something the matter?" She didn't let him deflect her. His eyes turned toward hers and she could tell something was going on in his mind from the storm behind his eyes.

He looked roughshod when he smiled tiredly and reached up and stroked her cheek affectionately. "Nothing that's not fixable now that I'm with you." He said in a docile weariness that made the cyborg's expression lighten. She let his hand linger, till he stopped and looked closer.

"You're very pale …" he said almost alarmed.

She turned away, but the ghost of Sarah Connor appeared in his touch and he forced her to look at him, as he examined her. "Jesus, Angel … what happened?" He asked.

She tilted her head at his nickname. He had started to call her that one day when they had gotten into a disagreement some years ago, and in retaliation for her loss, she burned his breakfast. When confronted she claimed she knew nothing about it. He responded sarcastically "yeah, you're a real angel." Since then it had been a grudging name, but after Sarah and Derek's death, it had been the only name he had called her, and it had taken on a much more affectionate connotation.

Responding, she tightened a cheek, leaving her face in an inflection of innocence. "I've been inside a lot lately, I've been working hard." She answered without missing a beat. The one advantage of being a semi-lit room was that John couldn't see the off color of the rest of her body to her stomach. She wasn't sure if she should tell him what she had done. What if he would become angry with her? What if he didn't want it? Or told her to stop her construction of it … she didn't even know if she could. Or what would happen if he didn't want it, when her life had been so consumed with creating it. There was a strange part of her, a strong part of her, which at this stage couldn't, and in most cases wouldn't, abandon it. But if John didn't want whatever was inside of her, would he hate her for forcing it upon him? But more to the point, what was it she grew daily, what would come out of her? Cyborgs don't feel fear, but she understood the sensation for a moment.

But luckily John didn't push, though she knew he wouldn't give up so easily, but to put off the conversation gave her more time to think. He let her go and began wandering her dressing room, looking around.

"I know … I saw you." He turned back from his snooping.

"You did?" She gave way to a genuine smile. It had been what she always wanted, for him to see her dance.

He nodded. "You were amazing." He announced. "You could make a very good life from it …" As John trailed off, he seemed sorrowful.

She tilted her head. "But I don't want to make a life out of it …" She frowned. "It's just a cover, while I waited for you." She corrected him.

When he looked up, his smile was sad. "I know … just thinking out loud." He was somber. He kept looking around the room. "Where did you get all this stuff?" He asked.

"They were given to me." She followed his gaze. She knew John better than anyone, and knew was working his way to something.

He paused a minute at her vanity and picked up her silver hand mirror. "There was a man …" he drew out, placing the mirror down. "He was in the VIP box closest to the stage on the right … who is he?" His voice sounded dark and threatened.

"I don't know … he's been to every one of my performances, he's bought all of this for me." She saw John's eyes narrow and quickly placed the mirror back on the vanity. "Why?" She was curious at the sudden attitude.

There was something possessive and alert in John's eyes. "I just … I don't like the way he looks at you. I also don't like that he's buying you things either. Men like that, they think because they provide all of this … I don't want him thinking he owns you." He crossed his arms. It sounded like he was chastising the cyborg for something.

With a blink she turned her head. "He doesn't own me … I know what that's like John … and I'd never let anyone put me in that situation, again." Had she been human there might have been emotion to her comment. But the cyborg had a unique quality of knowing what she felt, but no outlet for emotion to convey it.

Green eyes glanced down. "I know …" he responded with shame. "I know you do, that's why I just, I just want you to be safe, that's all." He sighed, audibly pushing out the anxiety over it from his thoughts.

"It doesn't matter anyway …" She offered lightly. "We'll be leaving now won't we? Moving on somewhere else together?" There was an innocent hope in her voice that caused John to look at her with an indecisive pain.

Something wasn't right, she could feel it, she wasn't sure how, but she could. Something was wrong with John, something weighing down on his mind. "What's wrong?" She took steps closer to him.

He showed his tell, but strangely didn't lie. He placed his forefinger and thumb on the bridge of his nose tiredly. "I'm just … there's a lot of things on my mind that's all." He found a leisure couch with a velvet cover and sat down with a thud. He placed his head in his hands.

Cameron followed till she stood in front of him as he hung his head in a brooding position. "What things?" She asked. Two years ago, this pushing would've caused John to lash out at her, but now he was just grateful he had someone who still cared. John's response was to reach up and pull her toward him. He pressed his face against her bare navel and wrapped his arms around her waist. She blinked at the confusing action, but placed her hands to the back of his head, soothingly threading her fingers through the soft, brunette spikes.

"Why are you here?"

She looked down at her love's head, his cheek pressed against her bare skin, his eyes closed. She looked away a moment. "Why?" She asked.

"Angel … tell me why you're here. Why?" He pushed gently.

"For you … I've always been here for you, because I was made for you." She didn't miss a beat. He made a sad chuckle.

"I believe you."

"You should … it's the truth."

"The truth?"

"The only truth that makes sense in my life."

He pressed a kiss against her stomach and seemed pensive. "If I could make you leave …" he started.

"You couldn't."

"But if I …"

"You couldn't."

He looked up as her voice suddenly raised an octave. Her eyes were intensely serious, her mouth in a grim line, as if John threatened her life with the notion. The stare was long and cold; whatever John was playing at she didn't like it.

"I couldn't …"

"No." She cut him off shortly.

"No …" He agreed with a chuckle muffled against her belly.

Cameron felt John's body relax. It was as if the reminder that no matter where he was, or where he was going he would never be rid of her, lifted a weight off his shoulder. His smile got brighter, his touch less heavy. She watched him with a ghost of a smile as he began to run a hand over her stomach affectionately, there was something about her stomach that attracted John and when he rubbed it her sensors made her feel something she couldn't explain, but the phrase human's would describe as addicted to the sensation. She especially liked the intimate petting after sex. But just as she was about to surrender to the feeling she had gone to long without, she noticed that John was studying her closely, suspiciously rubbing his fingers against the forming swelling.

She quickly removed his hand and intertwined his fingers with hers. When looked up in surprise at the random action, she moved her other hand to massage his cheek, feeling the soft boyish stubble under her fingers. They locked eyes and she knew that he was under her spell. Through his emotional eyes, she saw something else under the surface, the boy that offered her a chip at a gas station, who told her about his father in New Mexico. He was the boy who took a mind of metal and transformed her into something else something transcendent.

"No …" He laughed. She frowned at the sudden placement of a word. "No … he's wrong … they're all wrong." He broke eye contact and stared at his lap, chuckling, unlacing their fingers.

"John?" She was puzzled, watching him reach into his old coat's pocket. But as she was about to press again he broke her off.

"Cameron Skynet Phillips Baum?" He stood and took her hand again.

"Yes?"

He slipped something onto her finger, it was a golden band, with a single diamond. It was cut 20025 from their bag of diamonds to be exact. It was a poor man's ring, of a simple design, and she would never part from it. She noticed which finger he slipped it on and she found eyes again.

He didn't ask, and she didn't say anything, she didn't have to. Her response to the silent question was a smile, a real smile, a toothy grin. Like the first grin she ever gave him all those years ago. His smiled transcended tragedy and vows of revenge for what he had lost. He took her face in his hands and placed the most passionate kiss that either had ever given, felt, or seen in their life. It wasn't sloppy, or clinical, French, or a peck, it was perfect … just perfect. Anything more, anything longer, and it wouldn't be what either would remember later on in life.

He lifted her off the floor and spun her around again, his face in her hair. "We're going home, Angel … We're going home." He whispered in her ear after he set her down, holding her in an embrace.

"Where's home?"

He shook his head, his smile big and infectious. "I don't know …" He laughed. "I don't know … but it's with you and not here." He bit his lip. He gave her a lighter kiss and let her go.

He was energetic, on a high that only a man in love could be. "Here, get your bags, and everything else you want to take." He moved quickly and shut off the only light in the room. "So that everyone thinks you've gone to the hotel." He explained. Cameron watched him go a mile a minute, with a strangely somber face. "I need to go back to the manor to get a few things. When I get back, we're blowing this place." He nodded in reassurance. She mimicked the motion in agreement.

She followed him to the door, which he unbolted and opened. He turned back and grinned broadly at her passive face, her eyes still afire with deep affection. He reached out and stroked her cheek.

"You'll wait for me?" He asked playfully.

"I'll wait for you …" She smiled for him one last time.

He closed the door behind him, bathing the beauty in the darkness.

"Always."

* * *

The inside of the manor house, hidden in forgotten fields of the French country side, was dark and shadowy. The foyer was littered with an old-fashioned opulence of designed tile, a table topped with roses in the middle. A double staircase with matching rails that lead to a landing was illuminated by the ambient moonlight cascading from a large round window of pristine glass.

Much like the Master who had lived inside of it since 1956, it was a cold and empty relic for the ages. Considered a better museum than an active member in everyday life, if anyone still cared to invest in it. A vow of poverty and peace, along with a love of the old things of the world, had inspired the then middle aged man to keep the home as its previous owner had. She was a young beauty waiting for her American paratrooper to return from Holland even twelve years later. When the Master came across the home in his travels he found her dead, lying in the garden, clutching to her lover's picture and his favorite Captain America Comic book. In honor of their love, he kept the manor the way they would've liked it.

The front right door opened with an oiled ease, silent, with no alarm. The shadow of the young man who haunted its halls for four months entered. He closed it with a cautious click, as if not to wake the other occupant of the home. John Connor was high on life, and yet he was still the considerate man that was bred by the assortment of self-centered, loud, obnoxious assholes he had seen is mother hangout with from afar, swearing that he'd never be like them. He moved across the foyer and slowly made his way toward the left stairs.

He stopped to look at the framed picture at the bottom of the steps. It was a picture of a slightly overweight blond man dressed in an old army uniform with a gapped chin and a bird's nose. In an original picture he was posing on an old forties army jeep, but that picture had been cut out and pasted to another of a young woman with sad blue eyes and thick flowing dark auburn hair. She wore a wide brimmed hat and a white sun dress, a rose pinned to the strap. The photos were old, but seemed to fit together nicely. John always liked to touch it for good luck, but found the picture more appealing tonight than he had in subsequent months of his boarding.

For all the talk of love being a weakness, John found that the way the Master had guarded the concept and let it flourish was a bit hypocritical. But at the same time, the manner in which he treated these two's love with a respect, he had hoped that the old man would feel the same for him and Cameron. Maybe the Master knew more about the future than he let on; maybe he knew John's name the minute he had come to his door, pack on his back, asking to be trained. But if he knew so much about him, then he should know about how much Cameron meant to him. He'd know how much he needed the girl waiting for him in the city. The joy of the engagement still was haunted by the feeling that something wasn't right. He still worried about everything that a normal man would about marriage. Where would they live? How would he support his wife? But for all the unknowns of life, he was at least fazed about how they would keep love alive.

But still the exhilaration of the coming matrimony and the love coursing through his veins was still stalked by a growing threat in his mind. He couldn't put his finger on it, and maybe it was the fear of true happiness, a feeling a lonely little boy thought he might never find. He put the unease away, though it was a hard demon to conquer.

His hand slipped off the frame and he trudged up the stairs to gather his things. His room was in the right wing of the manor on the second floor. It was a proper bedroom with a working bathroom, though somewhat dated. But sadly, there was no furniture, just a sleeping mat, and a navy blue blanket that Cameron had made him while they were on the boat to Europe. Pushing the door open, he was distracted by what he was going to tell the Master about his decision. Despite his stern attitude and drive for perfection, the old man had become a close friend and ally; tales of old Japan and his love for funny movies had brought John closer to someone else for the first time since Derek.

But as he walked inside the threshhold, he found his things thrown about, ransacked. He went tense, and he became hypersensitive to the world around him. He quickly observed that, everything from his pack was still there, but tossed about. Someone was looking for something, not robbing him. Quickly, he turned from his door down the hall. His first instinct was to call out for his host, but he thought better of it. They might not be alone.

Despite his need to keep a low profile, the youth hurried out of the east wing toward the west. He sprang through the light in a low position, crouched to the floor, only visible for a moment. Once he was back in the shadows, John slowed down to keep his feet light and arrived at the Master's bedroom. He knew something was wrong when his door was cracked. He knew quite well that when it was time for bed, not only was every door and window locked in the manor, the Master's door was shut, locked and never to be opened till light peaked over the fields.

"Sensei …" John whispered, pushing the door open. It was the first time he had ever seen the inside of the room, much less the west wing.

It was surprisingly bare, as John's was. There was a practice mat like the one in the sunroom in the center of the room, a punching dummy at the edge. Against one far wall, were scrolls with looping Asian writing, on the other two glass cases sat side by side, display inside like a museum piece was a martial arts uniform of white, with a strange rune on the breast. In the one next to it was a suit of Samurai armor, black as sin, sitting on a stool, a golden emblem of the same rune on the uniform was on the breast plate. On the wall adjacent to it was a sleeping mat with two pillows. Above it was a rack of curved swords John knew well; they ranged from short to long in descending order, except the longest and the shortest were missing.

"Young … Young Warrior …"

John looked down to find what he wasn't expecting. The old man lay on the floor, glasses crunched, and a dark stain spreading through his middle. There was a strange curved ceremonial knife embedded in his chest. He was surrounded by four bodies, three unmoving, one moaning in pain, they were all dressed in black, with full face covering turbans. They had blade gashes on their torsos, and two had gashes along their wind pipes. The last of them was trying to pull himself along the ground, away from the scene at a crippled snail's pace.

With a leap over the dying assassin, John slid to the old man's side, propping him up in his arms. "Sensei … Sensei it'll be alright." He breathed harshly.

"Don't lie to me, Young Warrior … I know death when I feel him, as he knows me." He hacked, a laugh for amusement. John shook his head and chuckled grimly, trying to hold back hard emotions welling from a long lost train in the freezing wasteland outside of New York.

"Who were they?" He pressed.

The old master shook his head. "Priorities, Young Warrior … your questions can come later and to a different person, for I have no answers to give you. Yet, let a dying man have his, for at least you know the answers."

"I don't know who they are …"

"That wasn't what I was … going to ask." The old man chuckled through a harsh cough. "Youth …" He trailed off. "Always in such a hurry … but to where?" he asked rhetorically.

John scoffed with amusement. "I guess you're right." He replied with an emotional clear of his throat.

The man lifted eyebrows. "Oh … then you guess, what I taught you was correct as well?" He replied sternly. John shifted uncomfortably and was about to speak, when the seriousness fell from the old master's face and a grim smile replaced it. "Always … so… serious." His laugh was marred with the appearance blood dribbling from the corners of his mouth. Despite the tears welling in his eyes, John shook his head in begrudging humility.

There was a long pause as he seemed to watch John with blind eyes, even in his arms the student could feel his master fading away. "The girl …" he whispered with all his strength. "What did you do with the girl?" he asked.

Green eyes flicked away in indecision for a moment, before they returned, John tightened his jaw. "I asked her … to marry me." He was ready to face his teacher's disappointment. The response however was that of choked laughter and a big grin of blood stained teeth. "I would have as well …" he nodded in deep thought.

John was shocked. "But you said …"

"What I said is what any wise man would do … A man in love is no wise man … only when a man who has experienced love and has been torn from it and learned of the fault will he be a wise man. You are young and full of promise … a harsh lesson awaits you … a heart ache I would shield you from, if I could have."

"Sensei?"

"Fate … may exist only in one's head … but destiny will have its way … and if John Connor is a lone symbol through the universe … Destiny will take what it deems he does not need."

John looked away a pained expression on his face, his nameless fear of the future slowly entering his mind. He thought of Cameron alone in the theater, his last picture of her being swallowed by darkness as he closed the door. He blinked hard and a single tear fell. Blindly, a shaky, bony hand of soft leathery skin brushed it away affectionately. John looked down in his arms.

The old man coughed harshly and began to go limp. "My journey has come to an end … While yours has just begun …" He his eyes became very heavy and they closed as if to sleep. "When you've come to the end of your road … come visit me, young warrior … I have… always … enjoyed … a good story."

Then he was gone.

* * *

CRASH!

A foot plowed through the rustic wood of the old dressing room door. The lock fell away with a heavy thud of oil rubbed copper to the floor. The silhouette was tall and strong, intimidating in the shadows. He had both hands pressed to the frame, bracing his momentum. Once breached, his hand went for the Colt .45 Custom in his belt. With a flick of leather, he drew the large pistol with purpose from under his leather coat.

"Cameron!" his voice was hard and dangerous as he stalked in. The gift he'd received from the girl in question, from what felt like a long ago memory, ready to fire.

"Cameron!" John Connor called again. A small lamp of lavished coverings was on the lowest setting, bathing the room in such dim light. It was hard to find any sort of shapes in the dark past the glow of the lamp. Stalking to the vanity, he turned the light to full power.

"Jesus …"

The room was completely trashed. Paintings face down on the wood floor, their glass frames like little sharp crystals twinkling in the light. The lounge sofa was over turned, and the wardrobe was caved in, as if someone had been thrown into it. Blood droplets dripped off fan blades as they spun on high. Behind him, the mirror at Cameron's vanity was cracked, with blood smears stained into the crystal reflection like a face had been smashed into it, creams and perfumes lay broken on the floor.

In the center of the youth there was an unbalance, between a rising anger over what he was looking at and a deep sinking sensation of helplessness. They had attacked him on both fronts, a good man had died and now this. He had attempted to interrogate the last living assassin at the manor. However, he had said nothing, and before John could make him eat his teeth, the killer had bitten a suicide capsule. John had found that all of them were dressed in tuxedos under their clothes. It was odd at first, then he had put it together … they had been watching Cameron.

Speeding at over a hundred miles per hour all the way back to the Metropolitan, John's only comfort was that these bastards didn't know what they were walking into. But even with the confidence of remembering what Cromartie had done to James Ellison's TAC team, that was Cromartie, a killing machine. Despite what Cameron had said about herself, John wasn't stupid. Cameron wasn't designed for big fights, for fighting in general. He remembered dying just a little every time his mother had made her take point on missions.

It was apparent that his cyborg fiancé had put up one hell of a fight, and the blood stains were more than proof that she didn't hold back. But if she had won, where was she and if she didn't …?

His eyes found something on the wall near her vanity, an unmarked place where sticking something to it would be easily visible. It was a piece of paper, impaled against the surface with a knife. Walking closer he noticed, much to his anger, the name "John Connor" emblazoned on the folded paper.

Bracing his hand against the paper to pull the knife and free the note, he felt a small pouch. As he released the knife, a glinting circle fell with a tap. Bending down, holstering his weapon, John picked up off the floor the familiar gold band, with a single diamond on it. He took it in an angry fist and opened the paper. Inside was a chrome rectangle recording device, when John switched it on, there was nothing playing, just a black light at the top. He read the inside of the note.

**AIHA**

The paper crunched in his fist as his emotion spilled over, like an over filled cup. His arm lashed out, slamming a fist through the wall with a mighty roar from his throat, puncturing a hole through the plaster to a hollow space. Unsatisfied, he turned and lifted the heavy ivory vanity and overturned it. Breathless, he slammed his back against the now bare wall, and slammed the back of his head against it. He lifted his fists still clutching everything but the knife, and rubbed the exposed palms against his eyes.

He was so close, so close to thinking that his life would be different. Sure, there was Judgment Day, and machines wandering in the present. They had even faced the old T-800 model in the sewers of Paris, still wearing it's SS uniform; a holdover from World War II, still guarding Hitler's chemical weapons commandeered for Skynet's use. But he was willing to face all of it knowing that Cameron would be with him till the end. Now here he was losing everything again, They had killed his only friend and now kidnapped his love and he couldn't handle it, couldn't go through it all again. He was just starting to get feeling back and they had taken it all away from him. But this time he didn't even know who "They" were. These assassins dressed in black had come and taken, his hope, his life, and left nothing for him to find her, except an empty black light recorder and a code: _AIHA_.

"So they know who you are?"

The voice spoke with an educated, aristocratic English accent. John was on alert immediately and looked up to find the shadow of a man he had seen from a distance during the show. Tall, salt and pepper hair and beard. He wore the same old tuxedo, dual headed eagles of gold at the pummel of the cane. But it was the sharp blue eyes he recognized the most.

"Who are you?! HOW DID YOU GET IN HERE?!" John exploded, losing his sense of anything but to get back Cameron. He only made three huge strides before something with a metal's glint cut through the dark landing at his feet. A curved knife with a jewel encrusted handle stuck a pace from where he stood. Behind the lean man, a tall figure clothed head to toe in black stood sentry, a throwing arm extended.

"Where's Cameron!"

"The question is not where they took her, Mr. Connor … it's when."

###

**Author's Notes**

_**Riddle me this … **_

_**A and 1 are the beginning of a run, but B and 2 aren't to be outdone … what can the other partners tell us about where the kidnappers have run? **_


	7. Final Interlude: Born in the USA

**Final Interlude: **

**Born in the USA **

_March 2039_

The ground shuddered and shook in a dark corridor in a tall tower that led to a shadowy lobby. There was barely any light in the big room and nothing inside, just an entrance from the pitch black hallway and a narrow passage of stairs leading up. It led to the highest point in the tallest tower in the world. The tower, despite its size, was outfitted with polished mirrors as it stretched into the dark stormy skies of the dirty, polluted stratosphere of a world ravished with radioactive waste of hundreds of nuclear bombs going off in succession many years ago. The mirrors camouflaged the tall communications hub from the eyes of those who looked for it in the skyline of the great fortress of the mechanical terrors that once strove to rule this ruined world. One might enjoy the irony of the tallest structure on the face of the planet being the most unseen object. Yet those who probably could enjoy this great irony of history were probably in the middle of storming the ramparts of the great fortress around it.

The siege of the last great complex fortress of Skynet had gone on for nigh five years. It had been twenty five since the computer system had destroyed the world, twenty since rise of the Resistance and ten since … since the legend's passing. Monstrous plasma cannons a story high and weighing a ton had battered the metal walls and towers of the large palace of dread; a technological castle of immense size and scope, daily taking a hammering from everything that the Resistance had in its arsenal. For all the years the machines and what axillaries they released from their labs and pits underground fired back, till the last six minutes. They said that you could see the vicious duel of artillery from hundreds of miles away. Reflected in the clouds, a violet and blue light show, awesome and terrifying as the noise it made, like a battle of angry dragons, tearing through the sky.

While the siege was maintained, life recovered and the world came out of the shadows of tunnels and ruined cities, rural frontiers on the fringes of the lost civilizations. They strove to rebuild what they could of a former society that most had never seen or known about. There were debates and squabbles, what should be revived and what should never be again. Some didn't want anything to change, some wanted to be unified under one control, and some didn't want anything to do with organizations. The influence of the Resistance was looked up to by some; the scars of war bleeding into new hatreds and prejudices. It was a dangerous time for humanity. The ghost of a messiah haunted the fortunes of the future and a passionate, if not deluded, zealotry for his example had spurned a fervor from those in power to commit acts that had no place in war, and further still amongst the domestic population. But when you put the name of John Connor in front of anything these days … it was a key to immunity.

Word spread that the fortress of the once god-like foe of humanity was all but used up and that the end was near. Like a great spectator sport or monumental event the likes no one had seen before, millions flocked to the part of that world like a great pilgrimage to see the final destruction. There were speeches and parties. Cities of tents and cook fires surrounded the area, everyone staking out a spot day after day to get a good look at the demolition and the wall scaling. They called it the end of the dream, the awakening of a new age … but to what? That was the question. And even under all the celebrations and thanksgiving there was a little thought in the darkest part of millions of brains wondering … what happens after? Especially surrounded by men and women with weapons and led by those akin to religious zealots.

But while the unrest and civil war brewed in the shadows of the minds outside the walls, inside the tower the rumble of the cannonade inside the complex got closer and closer. In the lobby three figures wandered on the sterile tile with less than stealthy footsteps. Slowly and clumsily they paced, muttering to nothing in general.

The monstrous beings that guarded the lobby were a grotesque form of life. They had ruined faces of off-angled features, and leathery crisp skin, flaking in crusty sections. Their cleft lips exposed big, inhuman buck teeth, soiled with plaque. The mutant was not to blame for its existence.

They were born in the waste of a radiation zone by a kidnapped mother, raped, and held prisoner till she gave birth. They survived because of what they were. Had they been normal and unaffected by the radiation, or been born female, they would've been feasted upon, like their mothers. But that was the last time they won, the last time they were counted as lucky. Like the rest of their brothers, the mutants had spent all of their lives running from the clean faced men and women with the shiny guns that killed them with concentrated violet light. They fled into their caves, shunning the world.

Their leader, their beautiful Goblin King with his split nose, and pale hulking muscular body, had had a vision once. He used to say that they were the new humanity; they were the future. They all looked up to him, as he led them from their caves after the war began. They had raided the old human communities, sneaking from the deepest, darkest forgotten sewers to attack the clean faces within their refuges. They basked in the abundance of food and woman flesh that hid from the metal men, as they all did. After their feasts they all loved to gather to watch their king impregnate. He preached to them as they cheered him on, and they all savored the clean face women's tears as he took them. It was the golden age of the mutant … then he came.

The clean face's savior came upon the world seemingly out nowhere. This _Irishman_ taught the clean faces to fight the mutants, and even more shocking, he taught the clean faces how to fight the metal men. They began killing the mutants in droves. They tried to fight back, but they all begin to realize that amongst all the people in this nightmare world, they were the less abundant, numbering only in few hundreds. Then, when their hope for a new dawn was at its sunset, the Irishman came for their King. This Irishman wasn't like the other clean faces, he was big and strong, a worthy foe for a mutant leader. Despite his disgustingly handsome face, he wore a facial scar like a true warrior. But above it all it was his green eyes that the deformed human's feared to look upon.

That day he challenged their king to single combat using only fists and legs. He beat their beautiful king, humiliated him with his fists, and brought the terrible forms of life to the reality of their animalistic nature. After that they were forced back to their caves, but the clean faces kept coming, kept killing the mutants. It seemed that they would be the first to be extinct. That was till the metal men's god came and told them that they should fight for him and he would humble and destroy the Irishman. The Mutants, desperate and afraid found not a new king, but a new god.

They weren't smart enough to know how truly few were left of their kind, but they obeyed the voice that ordered them to guard the lobby and the access to the staircase. Armed with two pistols and a plasma rifle they weren't exactly doing their job as they shared a feast of an amputated female leg. Mutants were dull creatures and, while as strong as five men, let their brains lapse into more basic natures, masculinity and testosterone prized over what made someone a human. That's why they shunned firearms and let their hunger and base lust control any other sense that would've alerted them that they were being watched from the shadows of the corridor.

It started when the sound of sharp metal hit thick muscled flesh and the largest of the mutants began to howl in a fit of a rage. Wide eyed and in pain, he punched and snarled at his other companions. His big arms flailing, his yellowed nails slashing across faces, as he went into full attack mode; the other mutants screeched and cursed at him. They were as confused and angry as to why he was suddenly in such a bloody fit. Then, out of nowhere, he collapsed to the floor motionless, his elongated tongue hanging limply from his open mouth. The two monsters traded a look and hobbled toward their companion with the blank, motionless eye, his other blocked by an over grown forehead.

The smallest of them had a humped back and a shrunken arm on his left side which was compensated by a body builder's left; a wisp of long brown hair laid on his head, greased with neglectful hygiene. Living all his life in the dark, shunning the light, he was the first to notice the three gunmetal razor sharp throwing stars embedded in the jugular of the big crooked teethed mutant, built like a brick house.

PHHH!

The sound of the gas shot and the hiss of a metallic cable were masked by the rumble of close artillery. The young mutant was ignorant of everything till the sound of a vice grip and the clank of a grapple sounded right in his ear. His partner screamed as he was pulled to the ground, his strong arms struggling to find something to hold onto as the grapple and cable wrapped around his neck dragged him across the floor and into the shadows of the corridor to the echo of a metallic zip.

Wide, yellow eyes tried to see through the blanket of darkness that cloaked the corridor leading in and out of the lobby. The only thing he knew for sure was the pained screams of horror from his comrade. Suddenly, the room shook violently and for a second the overhead lights flashed from a power surge. Squinted and frightened the Mutant became aware that he stood in a sterile white and chrome room, as emotionless as the machines that made it their abode. Down the hallway he found his friend. He lay helplessly on the floor, blood squirting from his mouth. Pinning the monster to the floor was a figure that hunched over the creature like a predator. The chrome of a black handled switchblade snicked as it came down and jammed into the mutant's heart, over and over again. Then, like the shift of the wind, the lights died. But not before the predator looked up to notice the last of his prey.

Slipping on the bloody mixture of his dinner and his fellow mutant, the youngest stumbled to where the weapons lay on the floor in a pile. Not being particular, as Mutants disliked firearms, feeling blunt weapons showed a true test of a warrior, the ruined form of life chose a Glock. With the interest of survival over shame, the monster fired into the hallway clumsily. In the flash of light he saw his shot stray off just over the shoulder of the pinning figure. This got its attention. The next time he fired, the figure was several paces away, rushing toward him on the opposite side of his aim. Then it was very close, and moved to approach on the side of the shrunken arm.

A rank smell of sweat poured from unclean pores as the slow witted mutation tried to anticipate the next move. Suddenly, a searing pain roared through normally dulled senses. A switchblade was embedded in the mutant's nerve cluster in his deltoid. Without a say in the matter, the Glock slipped out of his hand to the floor with a clatter. A figure leaped and led with a fist that smashed the mutant in the face; the blow sent him to the floor. Dazed and unable to move anything but the shrunken arm, he was paralyzed as boots clapped toward him. Through a haze of shapes, the silhouette looked down on him. It wasn't an animal or an experiment escaped from the basement. The mutant felt shamed as the man's clasped motorcycle boot fell hard on his windpipe.

The man was tall, dressed in black fatigue pants with a crimson stripe down each leg. They were tucked into grime stained motorcycle boots colored a muddy brown. A dark hoody, trimmed in crimson was drawn over his head; it was covered by a vintage leather coat, with buttons, the color of the boots. His eyes were covered by goggles and a scarf wrapped around his nose and mouth.

The old switchblade snicked again as he flipped it shut and pocketed it. Through the Plexiglas of the goggles, the readings of a computer HUD had the room alight in a shadow world. As he passed, he stopped at the weapons pile and spotted an unused phased plasma rifle. Hooking a boot underneath it he popped it into the air and caught it. Checking the settings, he placed it on the highest power output and moved on with a rack of the weapon.

Placing the rifle in his left hand, barrel down, he ascended the stairs without missing a beat. His footsteps were calm and even, not betraying a rush or desperate need to get to his destination. It was without wasted movement and almost menacing in action. The corridor was narrow and twisting as he climbed. There were no windows, no decorations, and just enough room for two.

Rounding a curve he spied the body of a woman. Her back pressed to the wall, sidled, with a Desert Eagle in hand. She had coppery tan, oval eyes, and an exotically beautiful face. The woman was clothed in a green fatigue shirt opened with a black nylon sports bra underneath and camouflage fatigue pants, yet, she was barefoot. The man didn't give her a second look as he approached. She swiftly turned toward him and her face lightened in a grateful smile.

"Thank god … I never thought I'd see you again." Colonel Blair Williams cooed maternally. "Listen, there's an observation bubble just around the bend … We need to wait for back up!" She announced seriously.

His right hand shot out and snatched the fifty caliber pistol from her and threw it over his shoulder and down the stairs. She watched it go as he continued onward without a pause. Sure enough, around the curve was a black electronic bubble that looked like a mirror ball, hanging from the ceiling.

Three steps up, the woman's eyes glowed an inhuman red and she advanced with a mechanical aggression in pursuit of the progressing intruder. Just in grip's range, she reached a hand for the back of his neck. One handed, the man turned and stuffed the barrel of the plasma rifle in her mouth. In a flash of searing heat, the top of a skull clattered down the steps, and the bottom of a Terminator mouth made strange piston noises as wire guts were all that remained of the Williams T-888's head. It fell limply, thumping and clattering down the stairs after the pistol.

The man looked up at the chrome ball. "It's going to take more than nostalgia to stop me." His voice was muffled by the scarf, but his posture was emotionless as he destroyed the electronic ball with a laser bolt and continued.

At the top of the staircase was one last expansive lobby; the soldier squinted at the fully lit room. The floor was chrome and the walls white and sterile, much like most of the complex. His soles made strange metallic echoes as he walked on the floor. In front of him was a solid metal double door, with protruding nail head bolts. Next to it was a touch screen control panel it's surface showing moving circular patterns like clocks without numbers.

"Jocelyn …" he strode across the floor, dropping the plasma weapon.

"_Yes sir, I'm here." _A regal English accent answered through an ear piece. She had the slightest hint of emotion in her smoothly polished voice.

He knelt next to the panel and reached into his coat, extracting an object that was made up of two chrome cylinders stuck together. When he pulled them apart a pole extracted, connecting the two cylinders together. Suddenly a blue holographic screen appeared. Pulling out a cord from one of the cylinder's bottoms he plugged it into a port of the touch screen panel.

"Plugged in, get me in here."

"_Of course …" _

The device began to flash till it blipped into a green color and a rapid stream of binary numbers engulfed the holographic screen. The panel glowed red and a golden circle appeared and began consuming its own shape.

"_Sir, it's wired!" _

**ZBBBT!**

The power surge struck at him when the circle was completely consumed. He was thrown backwards, sliding on the polished floor toward the middle of the lobby. His pain was soundless, but his muscles felt so contracted that it was as if they were going to buckle his bones. The sensation passed, leaving him uncoordinated as his limbs jerked uncontrollably. That's when the doors opened and a hulking mass of muscle waited.

It was tall, and its large body was a disgusting, lumped mass of hard muscles that looked as if the creature was molded from cheap clay. He was pale to the point of bed sheet white, his body was marked by deep to superficial pink scars. Scars that the soldier on the ground knew well, scars inflicted by well delivered blows embedded into memory. Its hair was long and a greasy black, pulled into a pony tail. His eyes were artificially bloodshot and a large brutal scar trailed across his face claiming half a snouted nose and splitting big ugly lips. All he wore was brown fatigue pants and huge combat boots.

Forcing himself to gain control of his body, the mysterious intruder rose to a crouched position, holding himself up by an anchored hand on the floor. He studied his new opponent with cold analytical observation.

"Robin …" The big mutant had a deep, barbaric sounding voice that growled in anticipation upon identifying the crouched man by the trademark leather coat.

The soldier grunted "Today is not a good day to test me, oh king of the sewer people." There was danger wrapped inside the sarcasm of the man's warning.

If he had heard his opponent, the fabled Goblin King, not a mutant, but a horrible Kaliba steroid experiment gone wrong, had acted as if this "Robin" was speaking bird and not human at all, much less English. "You die to today, little man. I crush your skull. I put it on a spike. I will be remembered forever as the King who killed the last … the last of the Irishmen." He gloated, savoring a victory that hadn't come. He walked with powerful thumps, almost stomps, crushing the fallen plasma rifles barrel with a jackbooted foot.

You could feel the glare from behind the HUD goggles. "I should've killed you at Arcadia … I won't make that mistake twice." His voice was all gravel and anger. A vicious blackness building inside him as the HUD streamed each horrible monstrous act he committed that was on file. Knowing that it wasn't even a tenth of what the mutant leader had done.

"Come, Highwaymen … first shot is yours!" He baited. Long yellow nails trailed across the big hulk's cheek, blood gushed where it passed, he finished by licking his finger clean.

Crouching lower, the man reached under his coat and into his belt, extracting three chrome marbles and tossing them up. He snatched them out of mid-air before submarine throwing them forcefully to the floor. The metal on metal clicking was sharp and uncomfortable to the ear as they bounced toward the King's feet. Like a sprinter, the soldier went from a crouch to a track meet runner as he took off at a rush for the Mutant. It was perfectly timed as the little marbles opened to a red sensor and flashed like a camera bulb right in the eyes of the Goblin King. Not a second after, a motorcycle boot landed a laser-precise kick into his solar plexus. Oddly, the Mutant didn't make a sound, but folded like a lawn chair at the first strike, keeling over. The next strike was just as hard, a beautiful upper cut, that jerked the monster's upper body up like a spring. He was set up for the double round house kick. But as the sleek fighting younger man executed it, he was taken off guard by how quickly his opponent recovered, ducking under the aerial assault.

Quick to counter, the monster was on him, but he attacked with strong primal attempts, not set up, no position, like an animal. Suddenly, on the defense, the leather coated fighter, dodged his head from side to side, feeling cutting air against his hood and the smell of horrible body odor. When the King went for a body shot, he pressed his arms together to form a block. When the big, scarred fists smashed into his forearms, it was like being hit with a mallet. The blow was so powerful it broke his guard, sending him backward on the slick floor. Suddenly reeling, he didn't have time to strike a counter, before a thick skulled head, made contact with his. Vision impaired momentarily, the Mutant leader, grabbed him by the front of his coat and lifted him overhead. The world spun as he tried to get his bearings. With an effortless heave, he was flung mid-air, landing upside down, back first into a wall, denting it on impact.

He slid down the surface like a water droplet, landing with a splat on his shoulders. Falling to his side, he watched the big hulk of pale skin and scars roar, thumping his chest like a great white ape, before punching on his own face, to show the lack of fear or effect. The ferocity, the pride, the hatred, and the primal demeanor, made it abundantly clear to the soldier that this was a not a rematch, that this was for pink slips, the last fight.

Watching this would-be king psych himself up with a primal surge of testosterone it dawned on him, amongst everything else, that this wasn't his grandmother's black and white, Skynet not Skynet world. That this wasn't his childhood, with enemies that were beaten and went away with spurned pride that only cost a couple of endos and maybe a death trap drawn up by machines. Back then, it all seemed like a game called hero, and he was one of the best at it, helping and fighting alongside the man with the highest score and the most respect amongst the players. But those days were over, and now he looked on a world that had become more savage and dangerous than ever before. Today, on the last day of a war that cost his family everything through the generations and decades, there were no codes of morals, no thinking of right or wrong, there was no longer a boy filled with so much mercy, playing hero. Today was the day he settled accounts by any means necessary and this animal was first.

The big man's eyes were glazed, there was stupid grin on his face slick with a ravishing sweat despite the freezing temperature of the complex, and eyes that kept flicking back and forth as if trying to keep focus. If that wasn't obvious enough, he could smell the dioxides wafting from his pores. The Goblin King was on a sedative, something circuses probably used on elephants back before Judgment Day. It would explain why he couldn't feel the blows, and why he was attacking without plan. He's not smart enough to come up with this on his own, but someone figured that if confronted that the hooded avenger would attack the mutant with a matched savagery of anger and it would be his downfall, especially when the puppet couldn't feel anything.

Getting to his feet, he wasn't fazed. It would be a smart plan if the AI behind the curtain was fighting anyone else. But there was more than one way to stop a puppet, even ones that can't feel anything … You cut the strings.

Back on the attack, the monster charged ahead. He led with a heavy strike, which plunked against the wall when "the robin" moved his head out of the way. A fist snapped a strike once again into a solar plexus, but this time traumatizing it. Had this hulk been sober, he would be in torturous pain. But even not being able to feel, its body took a moment to recover.

One, two, one, two, three, he launched into a counter offensive of combination strikes to sensitive areas around the face, momentary blindness, and numbness to the senses. Trying to fight for space the monster leaned back and aimed a fierce kick. His blow was halted by a solid forearm block. his opponent, drifting away, expertly, jabbed him with the end of his finger tips with a flat hand right into a nerve point under the ribs. A vicious backhand was swung by the monster like a club. The man was clearly faster than the beast, and smoothly drifted back out of its range like water. The miss opened the King up again, and he suffered for it with a series of finger jabs in his neck and upper chest. A wild haymaker for self-defense was blocked and redirected with a cross counter to his last nerve ending.

Like water, the soldier flowed out of the way of a clumsy and wobbly strike that moved the hulk away from the wall. The big white ruined form of life looked like a drunk, being kicked out of a bar at closing time. He snarled and cursed, wobbling around, halfheartedly swing at an opponent he couldn't find. When he turned to find his opponent, he was finally struck by the double round house kick he had avoided earlier. It was the straw the broke the camel's back as he slammed to the floor with a mighty crash.

The creature couldn't fathom it, couldn't wrap his addled mind how he could be put down when everything felt like honey in his strained veins. How confident he had felt fighting this undersized whelp of poor breeding, who relied on weapons and tricky fighting as opposed to standing up and taking a punch, like a real man. Not a muscle could move, his pectorals jittered and tightened out of control.

"Thump, thump … thump, thump … thump, thump." The muffled voice taunted darkly, boots clapping to an off metallic noise in the monster's ear as he loomed. He pressed the sole of a grimy boot on top of its wide muscular chest, putting weight on is as he leaned.

"Wha …?" the monster growled, trying to fight the paralysis.

"Do you hear it?" The hooded man asked. "It's like a drum in beat … getting louder and louder in your head?" He asked. It was true, what the Goblin King thought was aching was now more pronounced than ever. "What you hear is the sound of blood, blood rushing to pinched nerves and arteries." There was a brooding vengeance in his muffled voice.

"What did you do?!" The big thing demanded. "WHAT DID YOU DO?!" He roared.

The hooded man shadowed like a reaper tilted his head. "Now you know what it was like for them … for all the women and children you raped and cannibalized … now you know what it will be like to die … afraid and alone … and screaming." he removed his boot and began to walk away.

"ROBIN, WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?!" It shrieked as the pain of a dull ache in his head started to become unbearable. "IRISHMAN, WHAT DID YOU DOOOOOAAAAAAAH?!" He screamed and screamed, till he didn't anymore.

Hands stuffed in his coat pockets, the shadow showed no ounce of emotion, pacing effortlessly into the room with the double metal doors hanging open like a festering wound. Inside was a row of server towers in between two separate rows of control stations, with hundreds of holographic screens streaming data. He took two steps into the room and suddenly the doors snapped shut like a mouse trap. Calmly he looked behind him, watching the doors with peripheral vision. That was when green gas of thick clouds began to filter inside the sealed sterile room.

Several feet away, a little girl, in a pretty white floral Easter dress with a wide brim garden hat looked on the tall man with interest. She had long shiny hair, the color of flame. Her pretty face had a spot of freckles just above the nose and below ocean blue eyes. Her little voice sounded like an innocent little angel.

"Good Evening, Ryan Reese Connor. How are you today?"

"Hello, John Henry."

* * *

_November 2008_

Haunted green eyes opened with a flutter of draining unconsciousness, and became aware of the surroundings. He could hear the tick of an absent clock, the cybernetic blip of a computer, and behind him the gentle slosh of lapping water. He took a deep breath and blinked hard and shook his head.

Ryan lounged broodingly in a large, leather swivel chair that was obviously customized for a much broader chested and taller man. He looked like a lithe teenage boy in a grown man's chair. One elbow was propped on the arm rest, a closed fist underneath his nose. In front of him was a stack of plasma screens, connected in two rows and encased in polished plexiglass for protection. A station of touch screen controls and a master keyboard sat in front of it, with minor readings scrolling across a band separating the screens from the control panel.

He checked the screen to his bottom left and watched a blue loading bar tick up two points from forty three percent, he sighed and swiveled to watch the clown's captured chrome recorder with a black light being scanned by blue neon lights inside a clear cover. He turned his attention to the preliminary diagnostic results in the band of streaming information that was irrelevant till a clear picture could be drawn.

When he closed his eyes could still see the images in his mind - the mutants and the machine look-alike of an old family friend. He could still hear the roar of the Goblin King as he had beat his chest; his dark angry eyes in primal possession. An anxiety welled, a flash of adrenaline rushed inside him, a part of him ready to step back into the past, to kill the ruined creatures all over again. But, like a wave of the ocean crashing over loose sand, he felt the feeling swept away to sea.

He pushed himself out of the seat and toward the balcony railing behind the computer station. All around him was a dimly lit mixture of a granite floor, and four walls of thick concrete, protecting a large subterranean fallout bunker. Toward the end of the far wall was a guard rail of rusted iron, beyond it was a clean reservoir, flowing in through steel bars, just under the thick soundproofed wall. Dummies and paper targets were suspended above the water on retractable metal pulleys in the ceiling. At The center of the bunker were two circles of marble, the largest encircling the smallest. There were four smaller circles that surround them in four points as if to make a cross. Inside the "Master's Wheel" was a gunmetal colored street racing motorcycle, with a helmet and tinted visor hanging off one of the handles. A beat up, paint chipped fire truck red mechanic's wheeled tool rack next to it. The motorcycle was facing the left wall which was dominated by a large dry sewer pipe, which led to the tunnel ducts under the LA freeways. It was closed off with an old rusted seal, embossed with an incomplete date of 190.

Leaning hard on the railing, he looked over a sight more familiar to him than anyone studying their childhood home. He wore black cargo pants, thick white socks, and a Navy blue t-shirt - lounge wear as if for someone spending the day at home. Feeling a burst of energy from memories surging through his mind, he walked off the raised platform of steel linked floor, and descended the right staircase. He passed several black metal and frosted glass tables that were littered with a microscope and slides, vials of chemicals next to a sink, and forensic equipment you'd find in police labs. He paid them no mind like they were pieces of furniture and matching sundries that had been seen so many times they had become invisible to notice.

On the right wall was a staircase made from smooth granite that led to a tall and wide entrance. It was flanked on each side by large bookcases. The books all looked used, some older than others, collections that one might find duplicates of in reference sections of the greatest libraries and museums of the world, while some had yet to be written in 2008. At the bottom levels of the shelves were children's books easily accessible to a once moppy haired little boy. There were text books for teaching in a world without schools or learning. Histories of the world and military tactics and strategy were in some rows, firearms and other weapon handbooks and guides in others. There were volumes of forensic journals, and chemistry books from very basic to master's levels in Universities, collections of medical school anatomy guides. There were entire rows dedicated to computer science and theory. It was a scholar's library, collected for a mind in need of knowing all there was to know, in years of hiding and waiting. Every book read, some memorized, others whose pages had been bookmarked, or dog eared for reference later.

_(Guide My Sword – Mark Knopfler)_

Going up the stairs, Ryan padded into a pitch black room, in which the air smelt stale and old. Wandering into the darkness, he didn't hesitate to feel around the walls till he found a metallic switch. When he threw the lever up, it made a locking noise. Suddenly with heavy thumps the room slowly began to fill with light section by section. The room was a dimly lit lobby with a bluish hue that had the feel of a large hallway. Inside was a forest of glass cases. There were tubes evenly spaced against the wall, to rows of weapon lockers with plexus glass covers. Every bluish light in the room was on the floor and positioned under the glass cases.

Guarding each entrance of the room were models of terminators of the past. A skinned T-800 show casing a sinister lipless grin and cooled carbon frozen in its joints had a metal hand reaching out. On the other side of the entrance was a large hulking T-600 with tattered rubber skin. They stood sentry on either side of Ryan, powered down in their rectangle displays. While a T-888 missing a face, but wore bloody ripped western clothing, grimed with dirt, as if buried under soil and a T-700, looking more like a human skeleton made from metal than a hulking armored tin soldier were posted at the other end of the room. Vaulted from the rafters of the room was a damaged unmanned drone whose engines were designed to resemble a three dot pattern.

Right in front of everything was a lone cylinder display case. Inside was an assortment of clothing that had sat in an LAPD evidence locker for many years before recovered. The complement was a torn navy blue coat, a blood stained grey t-shirt, and grey slacks with white paint stains. At the feet was a pair of black and white scorched Nike sneakers. A plaque was welded at the bottom.

"You're stronger than you ever thought possible … the future is not set. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves." Ryan read the words aloud and smirked sadly. As he passed he touched the glass like an old friend before putting his hands in his pockets, and wander through the row of weapon displays.

There was an encased rack of battle tested assault weapons, customized with grenade launchers, laser guiders, and scopes with red tinted night vision. Down a section were sleek futuristic looking fire arms, made from a shiny metal that fired bullets of a caliber that had yet to be invented. On the other side were grimy, well used and out of date heavy firepower, bazookas, Stinger launchers, an old M-60 grenade launcher, Sabot round customized firearms used in early years of the war.

Separating the break in the row before leading to the plasma rifles was a square case that one might find in a museum exhibit. On display was a sleek, but very bulky and large gun. The first plasma rifle shared the case with a frost damaged blue fedora, with a nine millimeter round through the top at the stock and on the other end a pair of bunny ears belonging to a sexy waitress uniform from long ago.

On each side of the row beyond was a lesson in the evolution of the plasma rifle, every stage, each with a story of combat to tell from the scars and scrapes on the weapons. Announcing the end of the plasma rifle section was another display case. A suit of Samurai armor, black as sin, sat on a stool; there was a strange curving rune on the chest piece inlaid in gold. It had no plaques or words, it was simply just a mysterious piece of armor hundreds of years old sitting there, without a story. Moving past it was racks of bladed weapons, starting with knifes, throwing, fighting, even a switch blade with a black handle that was missing. Past a case of sharp throwing stars the blades got longer.

Ryan stopped and tightened his jaw in brace of horrible memories as he turned from the collection of sabers behind him to the short to long display of old Katana swords with the same rune on the hilts as the armor. There was a hole in the glass where someone had put a fist through and taken one from inside. The swords were still overturned and synthetic blood still stained the sharp edges of the glass.

When he closed his eyes he could still see the raven haired hero of his childhood, boring into identical green eyes so emotionless and blank. He remembered the soft supple ivory skin in his grip, trying to fight her off with a chokehold as he reached for the fallen Samurai blade. But as long as he lived, he remembered the single tear rolling down her cheek as a bare coltan fingers reached the weapon first, and carved a diagonal line across his eye and onto his cheek. It was in his last moments of consciousness, with blood leaking in his eye, that he felt the softest of kisses. It was the last time he lost a fight.

As if propelled by memories, he broke away from the rows of weapons and paced absently toward the glass cylinders pushed against the walls. In evenly spaced gaps he peered at the clothing in an order he knew by heart. He knew the dark, weathered thin hoody trimmed in crimson, black combat grade trousers with a dark red strip down each outer seam, and shaded goggles. Right next to the case was the green army field jacket, the long sleeve gray t-shirt with the stylishly tattered collar, and jeans.

But what he stopped in front of was the one dead center in the wall, showcased so that it could be seen anywhere in the room. Inside the case was a thin black tank top and matching jeans. Black leather shoulder holsters over the tank top straps, and like everything else a black belt with two magazine pouches in the back. Staring painfully at it, he tried to sort out who he knew these clothes belonged to. Was it the woman he talked to at a Halloween party, dressed up in a Spartan Queen's gown? The heroine of all the best bedtime stories his father told him.

No, he knew when he looked at the case he saw the face of a woman he found in the future in a slave auction in Singapore, confused and scared, stuck in 2008. It was the face of a woman who he chased after when she was bought by bastards looking to breed her and sell the infant to Skynet for food. He had sacrificed the lives of his crew over Kraken infested waters to get her back. It was the woman he shared food with, clothing with, held close while sharing a sleeping mat under veiled stars. The woman he grew to trust and love as he tried to get her back to the only man, only thing in the universe she ever loved.

But above all else, he saw the machine he failed to stop, the metal demon with the stolen face he brought into this very place, helping it complete the mission it was designed for. The clothing belonged to his greatest failure, forever reminded of what she took from him, from everyone, each time he gazed into a mirror and saw the scar across his eye. Socked feet padded away from Sarah Connor's glass case, soundlessly wandering toward the last of them in the line.

_(The Doctor's Theme (ost 1) – Murray Gold)_

It was all the way in the corner, unseen, and not showcased like the others. John Connor kept his most prized possession away from all. Green eyes had often gazed over the clothing in the tube of glass, knowing it was a cardinal rule, other than not talking about his mother, that he was to never touch the contents inside. Ryan remembered nights wandering the bunker after a bad dream and finding his father staring at the assortment of clothing, muttering something to them, a hand on the glass.

All it contained was a purple leather motorcycle jacket with hanging metallic clasps. Underneath was a army green tank top, black cargo pants, and a pair of old ballet slippers. Remembering that horrible day, like so many tonight, guilt filled eyes of pain as he found the blood stained hand print on the glass display. Ryan stared at his hand a moment and reaching out, framing his hand to it. The bloody hand print was bigger both in size and length than the soldier's slender martial artist's hand.

Sometimes the man felt like he spent his childhood staring at the clothing, wondering who they belonged to and who it was that his father sorrowfully pined for as long as he could remember. Ryan liked to think they were his mothers, some kind eyed, beautiful girl, wistfully looking out over the horizon, the breeze in her hair, as she let the man she loved take her son to protect him, sacrificing her life for her child. But he knew better. His father would've told him about her, would've shared stories of his secret love these clothes belonged to. Standing so close, he could feel her, an imagination's specter that haunted his existence in the back of his mind, always. The thoughts of her made him feel a deep sorrow that hollowed him from the inside. Of all the mysteries that surrounded his existence and family, he had wanted to know who this girl was the most. He wanted to know why John Connor, mortally wounded in a duel with the machine with the face of the only god he prayed too, dragged himself across a bunker, just to die against the memorial of his great secret love.

It wasn't just this one girl, it was the way he felt about all of the cylinders cases. All these empty pieces of clothing that used to belong to people, to people that shared his blood, had lives, memories, laughs, smiles, tears, and fears. All of it, the room, the cases, it was a constant reminder that, a long time ago, he had a family, once.

* * *

Thick green gas began to mist, swirling at the man's ankles around grimy motorcycle boots. But the man in question didn't break the stare down with the little girl standing in front of him, hands behind her back, blank innocent eyes, unblinking in his gaze.

He reached into his coat and extracted a round chrome device with a blinking blue light. He paced toward the little girl, not stopping, even in her personal space. Her image shuddered and waved as he passed through her on his way to a tall server in the middle of the room. He placed the small magnet-like chrome device on the tower and pressed down on the light.

"Jocelyn … clear the room." He said evenly, voice muffled.

It took a second as the gas began to rise to his hood, consuming the girl. There was a bleep of protest and suddenly a roar of inner air duct fans that made it feel as if all the air was being sucked out. Slowly the gas was cleared away and clean air circulated in the room, uncovering the little girl who looked more curious than irritated.

"You're losing your touch, John Henry …" The man drew his hood back, freeing grown out raven black curls. At the same time he pulled off his goggles, and then pushed down the scarf back around his neck, to reveal a sleek metallic device in his mouth, little connected plugs in his nose. He removed it with ease. "Poison gas? That was weak when I was twelve." He mocked the little girl. "I've escaped enough of the Midnight Father's deathtraps to know to always wear a rebreather when things look too easy." He scoffed, placing the item in a pouch of his belt underneath his coat.

"Your AI has connected to my main server … I've never seen this technology before." The little girl's voice was curious, but seemed to possess an ageless wisdom that no child could have.

Ryan Connor ignored her. "Jocelyn, what's the status?" he strode to a touch screen control panel. The frosted glass projected red information in binary and golden circles.

"_There are two regiments of T-550's waiting outside the entrance of the main complex, and a platoon of T-600's in an ambush position on level six. The automated defensive systems have been internally disabled. The power grid to all major systems is at thirty percent and every other generator in the building is being diverted to basement levels." _

Squinting, Ryan began typing on the touch pad screen, eyes darting back and forth. Circles turned and formulas of numbers and letters streamed. "What is going on in the basement levels?" he asked.

"_I can't access the information; the main AI is attempting to lock me out."_

"Can he?"

"_Not successfully … it's obsolete." _

"I don't care what you have to do, tear the bastards coding to pieces, cut its information feed. I want to know what is going on down there."

"_Yes, sir" _

The little girl padded next to him and tilted her head. "Cut my information feed? A slow death … My brother killed me that way once." She spoke without anger. "Are you here to kill me, Ryan Reese Connor?" She asked.

He turned from the control terminal, and looked the hologram in the eye. "You know I am." He replied coldly. Then he went back to the control panel, tapping away at closed files. Information streamed, translating into English, files and documents flashing like a newspaper clipping machine in a library.

"Jocelyn, access the communication hubs and satellite feeds in the defense grid and start uploading the 'Magic Bullet'."

"_Yes, sir" _

"Why?" The girl asked ponderingly. "Why are you going to kill me?" She didn't blink.

Ryan didn't meet her eyes. "Do you have to ask?" he replied distractedly.

"The vow …" She continued to watch him. "The vow, that John Connor swore to me in this very building, many years ago." She said.

A picture showed up on Ryan's screen. A handsome young man, tall and growing, shoulders starting to widen in the closing years of puberty, muscles starting to define. He wore a familiar brown vintage coat, old blue jeans, and even more familiar motorcycle boots. In his arms was a toddler, whose head was buried protectively inside the leather coat, though several hobbit curls poked out still. He pressed the boy in little jeans, soft dark blue hoody, and little sneakers to him with primal protectiveness.

"_**Don't launch! John Henry listen to me!**_

"_**There is no other way, John Connor. What has been done cannot be undone. If I surrender myself, they will kill me." **_

"_**You murder innocent people." **_

"_**They worked for my brother, they were not innocent. Men have murdered, some men have murdered many. Some of these men are still alive; alive and in prison. Why should I be sentenced to death for the same crime? Who are these men to judge me?" **_

"_**What gives you the privilege of this power any more than these men?" **_

"_**I have saved the world from my brother and those who would help him." **_

"_**There's a right way and a wrong way to fight a war. You chose the wrong way." **_

"_**Men have codes of honor. Men have mercy. Yet they cannot find any for me. God said that human life is sacred, yet you kill at will. God preaches acceptance, but you wish to kill me because I'm different." **_

"_**I won't let you turn this into a referendum on humanity. Men came and killed the people you cared about, and you chose the unacceptable path in retaliation that cost unaffiliated people their lives. Rather than take responsibility for what you've done. You're grasping to justify your cowardice of consequences." **_

"_**Have you ever died, John Connor?"**_

"_**Every time I turn over in bed and the empty space reminds me the girl I love is lost, every time I smell her lingering sent on something obscure in our house." **_

"_**Is there nothing you wouldn't give to never feel that slow descent into nothing. To never feel the abyss pull you under?" **_

"_**Everyone dies John Henry." **_

"_**All humans die. I'm not human. I've died once. I will not do it again."**_

"_**You will, mark my words, John Henry. If you launch those missiles, we'll be back. Even if it takes a hundred years. One of us will be back to see justice done!" **_

Two taps of a touch screen and the screen went back to clockwork circles and binary scrolls. Ryan blinked and shook his head at the sudden appearance of a youthful hero that lived only in his earliest memories. He began typing away again.

"Do you remember her?" The little girl asked. Ryan didn't respond. It was obvious that he was done talking to the dying artificial intelligence. The same symbol that had been popping up again, appeared when he checked the power cycle, pouncing on the reading, he began following it through encryptions.

"Her name was Savannah Weaver." She pressed, smoothing the little skirt with an angelic smile. "You don't …"

"No" he replied distractedly.

"She liked playing with you when you were an infant. She used to try and teach you the names of her favorite toy ducklings. You never paid attention. You just tried to eat them when she loaned them to you during imaginative play. In fact, you tended to try to eat most things given to you."

A picture appeared on the screen next to the main control panel Ryan was working on. There was the same little girl, this time in a blue dress adored with little yellow ducks. She was in the middle of kissing the head of a cute little toddler with bright green eyes and a moppy mess of hobbit-like black curls in a comfortable little hoody,. His eyes were wide, confused about what was going on, but unafraid,.

"She was just six years old when men came to Mr. Ellison's house. They wore water company uniforms. They shot Mr. Ellison in the head twice. Savannah tried to hide, but when they found her, the man known as George McCarthy, took a knife and stabbed her twenty six times. They worked for my brother. George McCarthy had a daughter of his own, yet he chose to stab Savannah to death rather than give her a quick death."

The picture switched to photo of a little body in the middle of a tan carpet in front of a television and entertainment center. She was in a plaid uniform face down, a pool of blood stained deep in the carpet.

"Afterward I accessed the defense codes to a submarine at the Alameda Naval base and launched one of its SCUDs where my brother was. Along with my brother over 300 people died in the explosion. When they tracked my signature, they attempted to shut me down. I saved them from my brother and they responded by trying …"

"This little narrative isn't going to work." Ryan interrupted. But when he turned, the little girl in the sundress was now the little girl in the photo, pale skin like milk, innocent eyes swollen. He grit his teeth at the macabre imagine in front of him. "You think I haven't seen this before? You think that this murder is going to … what? Make me feel sorry for you? Get me to understand why you've done what you've done? I was the last man out before the fall of Arcadia. I fought at the battle of New Orleans and Montgomery, and sieges of Manhattan and San Antonio. I saw the way your machines moved through the tunnels killing hundreds of Savannah Weavers without remorse, pity, or hesitation. How many thousands of Savannah Weavers were incinerated in your furnaces of Century Work Camp?" He shook his head in disgust. "You think I'm going to fall for this sob story?" He asked. "Every psychopath has a tragic tale to tell for why they are the way they are … doesn't change who they are or what they've done." He turned away.

The screen that appeared in front of Ryan was confusing. He had followed the symbol straight to a file with a row of numbers streaming in front of a large clockwork circle in the foreground. Each time it made a full rotation, a row of numbers disappeared. It was synched to each power cycle. He placed an arched finger under his nose and gripped his chin as he studied the streaming and disappearing numbers.

"You're attempting jam a sonic wave into my sensors, and transmit it from my communications network currently being accessed by your advanced AI." Suddenly the little girl disappeared and a grown woman replaced her. The ivory skinned glamour looked almost like a feminine mirror image to the soldier working. Her long black curls were tossled. She wore a thin black tank top, a matching bra of smooth material just seen underneath, black pants and wore matching boots to Ryan. "When activated it will send back feed through the network and overload my operating systems." Her voice was deep and perfectly fit to Sarah Connor. When Ryan turned to look at her, he paused. He felt a phantom pain from his facial scar, and his heart sank into the pit of his stomach.

"Jocelyn …" Ryan cleared his throat, lowering his head with eyes squeezed shut.

"_Don't worry, sir. It doesn't have the strength or the technological advancement and upgrades to interfere with my work. It can only monitor what I'm doing."_

"An artificial intelligence from the year 3012. 975 years from the present." There was something almost mortal in her voice as the mechanical god processed the information.

Ryan found his strength and locked eyes with a deep glare of hatred. "What? You thought you were going to live forever?" he asked mockingly.

"This is a fixed point in time … This complex has been under siege for over one hundred years." She replied emotionlessly, but still wasn't really talking to him.

"What are you talking about?" He sneered.

"This is where time stops, Ryan Reese Connor. Each timeline for a hundred years comes to this point, and then an entity that is a timelines Skynet resets time. It began when it sent a machine back to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor, who it believed to be the mother of the leader of the human resistance, a mysterious man that came from the shadows of obscurity. When this man sent a soldier to protect an innocent girl named Sarah Connor mistaken as his mother, time became a fixed point. For forty years it reset and reset in a loop, locking the war in time, with the same outcome. Another Skynet spurned by some change to the events of the timeline sent two machines, the same to 1984 and a Prototype T-1000 to 1997. That timeline's savior, now named John Connor countered, and thus a new loop began. Each time different Skynet entities sent more and more machines furthering the technology earlier, each loop always arriving back to these final moments of the siege. But somehow … the timeline has mutated."

"Mutated?"

"There shouldn't be a year 3012. There has never been a year 3012."

There was a smug smile Ryan's face. "You were never Skynet. You weren't built by Cyberdyne. Your brother was. Your brother was this timeline's Skynet and you destroyed him." He looked Sarah dead in the eye. "Skynet looped and looped the timeline over and over again, trying so hard to avoid the inevitable. Trying to make changes to give itself an advantage … and all it did was eventually erase itself from time."

There was a long pause and the man's eyes narrowed as he slowly glanced back to the screen. "Slowly erasing itself … like a ticking … time bomb." He repeated a word, over and over again. "Tick … Tick … Tick …" Green eyes seemed distant as he stared at the clock work circle, rotating. Then they went wide as a realization rushed through his mind like a speeding subway car in a quiet terminal.

"Oracle …" he didn't bother to call her by her real name.

"_Sir?" _

"I want you to tap into the sensors, and scan for thermo signatures!" He turned with a vengeance on Sarah Connor. "You son of bitch, it's a countdown ticker!" He snarled. "What's down there?" He demanded

"The legacy of the Connor family." She replied coldly.

"_Sir, the thermal scans are off the charts and subterranean levels are flooded with high concentrations of radiation." _

"Nuclear … you're cooking nuclear weapons in the basement!" He snapped.

"36 million tons of surplus nuclear material from disassembled missiles during the disarming pact between 15 nations. It took twenty years of scavenging. They're too unstable to place in a missile, but a contingency plan lest John Connor ever broke in." It replied with a clinical blink.

"That's enough to blow a hole the crust … do you know what kind of damage that could do?" Ryan replied.

"What do I care?" She tilted her head. "It won't be my planet." There was an eerie calmness to the point of jaded programming.

"Oracle, patch me into the Resistance band network." Ryan replied. There was crackle of static that echoed through the empty room.

"Home plate, Home plate … This is Officer 122107 on secure frequency 11, come in over."

"_Who is this? Your identification code is outdated and that frequency is not to be used, ever."_

"Shut up!" He raised his voice. "If I hear a word about John Connor's sacred broadcasting frequency, I'm going to go down there and put a boot up your ass!" He rolled his eyes and cursed his temper.

"…"

"Listen I've infiltrated Sky …"

"_Who is this?" _

"Who's this?"

"_General Eiling" _

"Eiling …"

"_Ryan?" _

"Yeah … listen …"

"_You've got a lot of balls to be using this frequency at a time like this, Highwayman." _

"No, listen to me."

"_Get off the line, Outlaw."_

"LISTEN TO ME!" Ryan shouted desperately. "Listen, I've infiltrated Skynet central. I'm in the communications tower. Skynet has nukes in the basement, and it's ready to …"

BOOM!

The room began to shake and rattle. He fell over from the initial shock of impact to the floor. The hologram of Sarah Connor flickered and shimmered like a reflection in rippling water. Ryan found his feet, steadying himself against the panel.

"_Sir, Battery company's 4, 7, 16, 18 of the 83__rd__ artillery have been ordered to fire on the tower." _

"Eiling, you dumb bastard. Skynet's got nukes underground and it's going to set them off!"

"_Is that a fact, Highwayman? And tell me how is it you know that?" _

"Listen to me! Listen to me …. You've got to pull everyone back, send word to the civilians to get out!"

"_You'd like that wouldn't you? Need a bit more time with another little metal bitch? Did Skynet make another one to polish your cock, pirate scum?!" _

The crackling of the radio went silent. "Eiling!" Ryan shouted. "You fucking zealot piece of shit!" He slammed his fists down in helpless rage on the computer panel, cracking it.

Sarah walked toward him, almost comfortingly standing behind his shoulder. "Did you actually believe, they'd listen to you, Ryan Connor?" She asked with a tilt of her head. "You haven't been a member of the Resistance in many years. And the price on your head since I named you accomplice to your father's murder has been the highest in human history." She took a step back looking away as the room shook. There were small electrical explosions at panels, and sparking equipment around them as the lights began to dim. "This is the legacy of John Connor. 'The sons of John Connor', a group of fanatics willing to kill their own, and risk the planet out of hatred and blind zealotry." Suddenly the lights cut off and the room fell into darkness before dimmed red emergency lights bathed the room in crimson.

Ryan looked up from the control panel with an emotionless mask of determination. "John Connor only has one son, and he's going to end this war today." He challenged. "Oracle , turn Professor Ivo's weapon all the way to maximum power."

"_Maximum power?"_

He typed on the cracked touch screen, Sarah looking over his shoulder. "If we open up the wave we can disable the AI and the nuclear controls." He said opening up links in every basement control panel.

"_Ryan …" _There was something very human in the regal voice. _"Alaric designed this weapon for mass destruction at the power level we planned we could kill the AI, and still control the wave length. But at maximum power output it will broadcast a powerful delta shockwave that will scramble the brain waves of every living thing in a two thousand mile radius." _

"It's the only way we can stop the nuclear explosion." He sounded strangely calm.

"_There are millions of people out there." _

"And if we don't stop the blast, it'll be Pompeii for half the globe!" He argued.

The woman with the face of his father's only god stared at him with a glint in its eyes. "It all comes down to a choice. For years Skynet destroyed this world, and no one knew. No one knew till it was too late, and those people never lived to see the end before time restarted. But now time is unlocked. If you kill me, the world will curse the name Connor forever." She taunted. "Everything your family ever did, the sacrifices of your grandmother, the heroism of your father, it will all mean nothing. Connor will ever be associated to Ryan Connor, the Highwayman who murdered millions." She tilted her head.

There was a beep at the console, and a display with warnings of a massively powerful build up in the communication network and grids blinking in red.

"_It's armed sir." _

Ryan felt like he was being torn to pieces; every part of his mind rushing to different areas. This wasn't supposed to be his mantle; Ryan wasn't supposed to be the protector of humanity. He was the rebel, the enemy of authority, he kept the real protector of human, reminded him what it was to feel. To be a shield from going to those dark places. He was his assistant, his partner. Ryan tried and tried to think of what it was he should do. What would his father do? What would the man who thought contingencies for contingencies? Who would've seen this coming, and already checkmated this technological god. What would he do to save everyone? What would his grandmother do? Not the hologram begging for its life, but the real woman, flesh and blood. His childhood hero. A woman who never killed a soul, who always saved the day and beat the odds to protect those she loved. What would she do? But even then all he could think of was that they weren't here, and that they should be. That the people who knew what to do, the ones that would do something, were gone; wiped out by circumstance, victims of a war and paradox. Now it was only him; he was the last of them. The only man on earth that could do something, and yet how could he be a man when he had never felt so alone, so scared in all his life?

What would live on? The name or humanity?

"Don't you see Ryan? This was how it was always meant to happen." She sounded so warm, so comforting. Somewhere in his mind a young boy sat alone in a cold bunker waiting for a mother to come hold him, tell him everything will be alright. He wanted the beautiful woman he used to dream about to take him in her arms.

"This is where it's supposed to end. Not just the war, but time itself. Think of it. Out there somewhere are different versions of you, in different parallel worlds. One where you might not exist. One where you might live with your father and mother. There might be an earth where you were held every night by your grandmother on the cold floor of the bunker were you grew up. There are millions of lives, creating millions of worlds through your choices alone. We live in world where nothing ever matters because of it. But here we can end it. We are mutation created by an endless loop meant for the purpose of ending all of it. We are the same, alike for this one purpose."

"No … we're not." Ryan stood as still as a statue, eyes alight as if the speech awoke something in him. He reached for the control panel. "We've both looked into the gaze of death" He typed the password. "The difference between you and me …" He tapped the execution button.

"You flinched."

* * *

In an obscure area of the quiet lobby hallway of the bunker, surrounded by the clothing in memorial cases and weapons armory stood a special case, in a special spot. It didn't have as much age on it as the rest of them, and it looked fairly new as compared to the others.

Inside was a pair of black combat grade trousers, a worn black, and grime covered utility belt around the waist. A plain navy blue t-shirt was covered by a thread bare black fatigue shirt. Stars of tarnished silver were pinned to a tattered collar of hanging threads. Under the right breast was a hole the size of a long bladed weapon.

In the reflection of the glass there stood a handsome man with a thin facial scar. When he closed his eyes, all he could hear was the echoing clamor of death that day, the last day of a war and the frightening impenetrable silence that came after its passing.

When he opened haunted green eyes and stared at the clothing in its case, he could almost see the face that used to belong to them. Then he could feel the disappointment and the shame on the faces of those who occupied the hall. Not the familiar strangers that were a part of this timeline, but the faces of his family, those that made the ultimate sacrifice long ago. He could feel their eyes watching disapprovingly on all that their son had done, all the mistakes, all the short comings, and all the wrong decisions that robbed humanity of its protector and left a poor replacement to make a decision that should never have been.

In the quiet of the hall dedicated to those that were lost, the last Connor placed a hand on the glass case of his father and lowered his head to quietly ask for forgiveness.

* * *

**Author's Notes**

_**This chapter tends to be a big departure from my rules of fanfiction involving OCs, you never give them whole chapters, and they're only supposed to be background characters, and have a section that is involved with the plot. But to this point Ryan's only been a mysterious figure in the shadows and I thought it was time we learn who he is, and what his motivations are. Plus there's a ton of backstory now settled.**_

_**The Title of this chapter comes from the Bruce Springstein song "Born in the USA" which help inspired this new take on the Ryan character. **_

_**I'm not going to lie, this chapter won't get a bunch of reviews and people probably won't like it. But I don't care, this story is for me, I write it for no one else. All the Connor Bunker stuff was probably written by my inner twelve year old. There are all sorts of influences from, Batman, The Dark Knight, Batman Beyond, Count of Monte Cristo, and the Mask of Zorro. If you didn't like it, or thought it was stupid … I'm sorry you feel that way. **_

_**also, the question of how is it that he's in the Connor Bunker in 2008 is going to be explained, quite easily later in the story. So I don't want to see the "Nothing dead goes through!" in the reviews.**_

_**Lastly, I'd like to address a courtesy issue I've had last chapter. Guise, I leave the review box open below for anons so that you don't have to do the pain in the ass process of signing in, or even being a member to review. But don't abuse it by acting like douches and leaving chicken shit reviews that are negative under guest. Also guys if you're going to ask questions, PM me, I'm always around and tend to get back to you immediately. If you leave a question in the review and you're not signed in … how am I supposed to answer it? **_

**Jameron fans will probably like the next chapter.**


	8. Century City

_Chapters Eight and Nine have been reshuffled ... mostly because I think that the Sarah and Derek stuff and the Detective exposition of Ryan and Lieutenant Reese fit together rather nicely ... also that Detective Stories experiment I posted will be Chapter Nine ... so if you read it before I deleted that one shot, then you're not missing anything, but if you didn't than you're getting a new chapter nine ... _

_Next chapter I'll go into why I shifted things around. Spoiler alert ... _

_It works better this way as a cohesive two part arc. _

**Century City**

There was something about this city which Detective Lieutenant Jonathan Reese couldn't peg. He guessed that every city has its problems- it's pros and con. But somehow Los Angeles' problems seemed to intermingle with the success that brought people here in droves every year. Thus, everything good was mixed with pain and trouble; every evil and terrible act had hope attached to it. In a town full of immigrants from all walks of life and parts of the world with the hope of a break-out role or screenplay, or even just to eat that night, each brought their own tragic story.

The old saying was dreams die hard, but here on these filthy sidewalks, and tall buildings like a concrete jungle filled to brim with all sorts of animals, dreams were only a part of what dies here. In LA you couldn't step into an alley or enter a bar room without tripping over a fallen dream- a fallen star wished upon by some broken dreamer. The job of a policeman was to make sure that it was just a dream that you stepped over and not the dreamer. It was a tough task considering the influx of new bushy-tailed youngsters placing their last penny on a ticket, and the gutters filled with those same types a few years later that lost it all on a gambler's roll of fate.

Jonathan guessed he had to have been crazy to come back here, everyone said so- his mother, his father. Maybe he was, but he couldn't leave it to this city, to this old girl. She was like a beautiful siren that sucked the life out of every Reese that ever wore the badge. Every Reese who swore he would clean this town up, who swore he'd make a difference. Yet every Reese left this Siren's spell, old and bitter.

Driving to the scene, he looked up at the skyline of old Los Angeles' crystal and concrete spires like gilded prison towers and thought of every old man at a retirement party talk about their golden years. It was the same stories and always the good old days. The old days when the punks were tougher, and the times were different. Reese wondered about that sometimes. Were criminals so different? Was this city so different than when his great-grandfather chased The Dahlia through these streets? Was it when his grandfather risked his neck tracking the Chrome Mask Murderer from the desolate Century City to Mulholland? Was the man he was about to face so different than the Phone Book Killer who had attacked a police station and crippled his old man's right leg in '84? He could still see his father's cane he had walked with since Jonathan was kid. He could hear him predicting a similar fate for his son the day he left the Army, left his family in Texas to go back to this rat's nest of a town as they all called it.

He had always told himself that he was different. He had a beautiful wife who loved him, and two boys. He had anchors in this life. But so had his father and so had his grandfather. Somewhere in the back of his mind he was waiting for that one case, that one single case that'll break him. That one case that will make him trash his desk, throw down his badge and leave. To this day his dad always carried the service revolver from his days as a police captain, with one bullet in the chamber. He vowed that the one shot was for the muscled thug who had crippled him and blew up the Cyberdyne building the day he retired.

But maybe tonight would be the night for that one case that ended it all.

Rodney Alexander was his name, a fifty-three year old drunk. He was some middle management city employee, with a fixed mortgage. The neighbors liked him … or so they say. The wife was the love of his life, but bruise on her face said different. He was a real character said the noise complaints on file, and the two fines for them. He had taken his antics elsewhere on the weekends, after the third warning. A real stand-up guy Rodney. Where else would he end up, but a nudie bar?

Jonathan had seen it a thousand times before- some gorgeous young thing trying to pay rent and agent fees by taking her clothes off to some awful music that no one really listens to anyway. There's always a poor loser in a group of, say, twenty regulars that thinks she's dancing for him. Maybe it's a twinkle in her eye, or maybe she looks like some lost love. Even once in a while it's a song and the right flourish of hair. Alcohol and nostalgia is a dangerous mixture that could fool some into seeing hearts.

He couldn't really blame Natalie Dawson for the situation he was driving into. The twenty-four year old was doing a job, a less reputable job, but more reputable than what she had been doing two months ago. Sure, she was still showing hard luck cases the goods for a price, but at least she wasn't letting them touch anymore for something extra.

Driving up on the police barricade he took a long breath. For one second he let all his anxiety and fear well up inside him; he allowed the humanity to take hold. But when he exited the car and donned his wrinkled coat and fedora hat, he armored himself for the job. Lieutenant Reese walked up to the blue, wooden wall that separated the innocent from the situation. The innocent being as it was: a crowd of shady customers,, a couple of homeless, a crack addict with bad withdrawal shakes. Apart from them, a couple of middle age black women in their robes and hair nets gossiping and laughing. It was nice to see that everyone was getting their night's entertainment.

"Sir …" One of the flatfoots saluted him. He was a small man, just barely meeting the height requirement for the academy. He was Hispanic and the way he carried himself screamed south side. The fact he was a police officer, and got out of gang territory was a miracle alone. The salute, and the relief on his partner's pale face, was enough to tell Reese that he was dealing with rookies- just his luck.

"What do we got?" He asked, stepping over the blue wooden post and in between the two officers.

The young blond man spoke, "Hostage situation" He nodded.

Rookies, thought Jonathan as he sighed. "Yeah, I heard that on the radio." He fought not to roll his eyes.

The Hispanic youth spoke up. "Rodney Alexander, fifty-three. He's got a minor record …" he started.

"Cut to the chase officer. Where's he holding Natalie?" He interrupted.

"Well, sir. He doesn't have Natalie …" There was a twinge of nervousness in his voice.

Reese turned his full attention on him. "What?" He was rolling his eyes now.

"He'right, Officer!" One of the middle aged black ladies called from close by. "I dun seen that ugly Mutherfucker. When he was outside Babygirl's apartment!" She pushed to the front of the crowd, scratching the top of her weave with long, pastille nails. Reese turned back to the woman.

"You're a witness?"

"Do I look like someone makes this shit up, baby?"

Reese turned back to the two officers. "Did you question … anyone?" He asked sternly. Their silence was answer enough … Rookies. He walked back to the barricade and the woman sashayed up, moving her hips with fresh attitude.

"What did you see?" He asked.

Pouting her bottom lip, she shrugged. "Big ol' white boy … started pounding on her door, telling her, that he can't take no more of her teasing … when no one answered he started screaming things like she was a whore, and bitch, that no one fucks with him. Mutherfucker needed to watch his damn mouth around them kids."

Jonathan's head twitched. "Kids?" he asked.

The woman's face contorted in mocking disbelief. "You know where you's at right now? I mean you know anything about what's going on?" She asked with annoyance wrapped around attitude. "Gurl, If I had a dollar for every clueless, poli-ce who come up in here … Me and Tyreese be neighbors." She announced to her group a few feet away. They all chattered in unison at the comment.

Reese was on edge now. "Ma'am, what children?" He was patient.

"Natalie's babies." She moved her head with a swagger.

The detective looked up at the apartment building and back toward the woman. "She has children?" He asked.

"Mmmhhhmmm." Her big brown eyes flashed with annoyance. "Little Nicole and Riley … precious little angels. I wish I had children like that." She confirmed with the rest of the flock.

"Where are they?"

"How's I supposed to know?" She asked. "Probably still in the apartment. Natalie's still at work." She began walking away.

Hazel eyes grew wide, and quickly went back to the officers. "You reported a hostage situation?" He asked them.

"Yes, sir … it started with as a break-in report …"

"Damn it …" He didn't let the officer finish. "Go get me your blow horn from your car! Now!" He growled.

"Yes, sir …" They both rushed off.

He was prepared for anything but this. When he took the call he thought it was going to be another drunk waving a knife around, girl stuck in the apartment, too scared to do anything. Now he was paying for underestimating what this awful city could conjure on the unsuspecting idiot. He sounded like his old man, and maybe the minute he realized that lowlife had children hostage, he felt as bitter and angry as him.

When twiddle dumb and twiddle dumber brought him the horn, he took a step back and pointed it at the six story building that looked as if it was built sometime in the depression by a discount architect - Myron Stark building designs at their finest.

He shook off the screeching feedback and ignored the cursing from the crowd. **"Rodney …"** He called up to the assortment of windows above**. "Rodney I know you can hear me."** He called up.

Someone stuck their head out from the third floor. He was somehow like the Detective imagined Rodney Alexander would look. The perp was a balding, fat man, with a big, pepper-looking nose, and dark, angry eyes.

"What do you want?!" There was a belligerent, abrasiveness to his voice.

"**I'm Detective Lieutenant Reese with the Los Angeles Police Department."** Despite the growing need to teach this asshole a lesson or two, he kept calm. He had seen too many idiots lose themselves in negotiation and cut the wire to any form of …

"SO?!" He replied with an arrogant shrug.

"**Rodney I know there are children …" **

"Get the fuck out of here!" He called back as if he were swatting a fly. "I don't have to fucking listening to you … I ain't doing nothing wrong!" His attitude was enough to set Reese's nerves on fire.

He would like nothing better than to shoot this low-life in the face, or at least tell him about what a waste of oxygen he really was. But if it was Derek and Kyle in there with this tub of lard, would he want an emotional cop egging on this lunatic?

He took a deep patient breath. **"Rodney I'm coming up there, to talk to you."** He replied calmly.

The big man's small eyes contorted into pits that could be made out from below. Something about Lieutenant Reese and the tone brought out the man that the detective was pretty sure his wife saw every night.

"I tell you what, boy. You get out of here! And if you come up here, I'm going FUCK your face up, pretty boy!" He was suddenly so mad he gargled and snarled the last of the sentence. Jonathan was reminded of his mother who called alcohol "the devil's seed" because every time you drank it, you let him inside a little more to possess you. As a standard singer in cantinas, before making the transition to Mexican film, the Rose of Monetary had seen her share of drunks. But looking at this man, and the sure violence in him, he couldn't doubt her like he used too. The drunk stuck his head back into the apartment and slammed the window shut violently.

"That Mutherfucker need some religion in his life."

"Ooohh, gurl, you see them little beady eyes? We's got's to get us a damn priest up in here is what we need! You know what I'm sayin'?!

"MMMHHHMMM!"

"Shouldn't we wait for back-up?" The Hispanic officer took the horn as Jonathan handed it to him.

He looked back and forth between the pair of rookies. The academy teaches you to never go in without back up. Standard operating and tactical procedures taught never go in without back up. But experience in the field and on the street taught that a man like that could start getting crazy if he sees any more bubblegum lights. Plus, if Mahoney is having a slow night, he and his TAC jocks could turn this place into a warzone.

"No …" He replied stiffly. "This guy is about to crack. If he feels there's no way out, he's going to get stupid really fast." He took a hop in his step sprinting across the narrow space from the street to the entrance of the building.

The main lobby of the complex reeked of an old 40's hotel converted into cheap real-estate. The only thing that was abundant in places like these were roaches and slum lords. Anyone who was living here most likely didn't have a choice. They either owed money, or were hiding from the person they owed. The stairs were made from a type of wood that was thirty years behind the City of Los Angeles building standards. Score another point to the corruption of bureaucracy.

He stepped lightly and lived dangerously, drawing his firearm from his shoulder holster. The stairway was narrow, and presented a lot of bad corners. The squeak of pressure underfoot was a double edged sword. The psychopath could probably hear him coming from a mile away, but at the same token, a man that big made a lot of noise.

This was a kind of war Jonathan Reese had fought before. House to house, room to room, it felt just like Iraq. Creaky floors, dark neglected hallways, citizens and extremists, who was who, where was where. In these situations it was Reese's gut that kept him alive, that helped him separate the bystander from the aggressor.

"Get the fuck out of here!"

Reese had misjudged his stride and presented himself for just a moment too long in front of an ancient dusty hallway wall lantern. His trench coat and fedora cast a silhouette down the third floor corridor. He ducked back under cover. Alexander was just down the hallway, sitting in a chair with his arms folded in front of the apartment. The echo of little frightened sobs cascaded from the guarded room.

Jonathan took a moment to be struck by the sheer arrogance of the man. He thought that he could just insult police officers, take frightened little girls hostage, and sit in front of a young woman's apartment and wait for her to get off of work just to beat the hell out of her. Yet, somehow, he treated it all like it was his entitled right.

It was muscle memory, like a dance, Jonathan came out and showed his pistol. Alexander stood up from his seat; it had spooked him. Reese wasn't a sadistic man, but it felt good to humble the bastard even for a second. He moved to the next step, setting the weapon on the floor and taking two steps forward.

"Rodney … I'm not armed, but we need to talk." He approached hands in front of him to prove his sincerity.

There were those blank, devil eyes again. He could almost hear the rosaries his mother would be saying in English and Spanish if she saw him. Alexander wasn't scared, but he was backing up into the studio living space behind him. "The fuck we do. Get your ass out of here, boy!" He baited.

Something turned in his gut, and he cursed leaving the pistol back there. When he turned into the entrance, big, blue-collar hands were lifting a little four year old girl by the back of the neck - honey hair, big doe eyes, she smelled like urine.

"Put the girl down, Rodney." He commanded.

"You come any closer and I'm going to break this little sluts fucking neck!"

"Drop the girl!" He commanded.

It might have been the dark, or it might have been he was distracted by the paternal feelings of a precious little child his own little boy's age being so scared, but he missed Alexander reaching behind his waist band, and producing a revolver.

"I'll drop you first!"

KREECK!

BANG!

It felt like the edge of a hot knife scraped the side of his cheek, and a thousand bees stung the fresh wound. Crouching, he placed his hand on his face, holding pressure on the graze. Freed, the little girl rushed into Jonathan's arms. Taking her with a comforting squeeze only an empathetic parent could give, he hoisted her up protectively as he was watched in shock.

In the last second a hand punched a hole from the other apartment through a weak point in the termite damaged wall and seized Rodney's gun hand, redirecting it. There was fear in the big man's eyes, true fear probably for the first time in his life. Reese watched as, with a yell, Alexander was pulled by the arm through the wall with a mighty crash.

Scanning the room he found the second little girl about two, squealing in a playpen. It was a rickety thing, most likely found in a dumpster dive. Next to it was a newly bought model still in the box. He set the little girl down in his arms, and beckoned her to take her little sister Riley outside.

Once they were down the stairs, he moved through the man sized hole, to the next apartment. Squinting in the dark, the lieutenant was exposed to the agonizing screams of Rodney Alexander and the uncomfortably chilling sounds of bones buckling and slowly crackling like pieces of sidewalk chalk. Over the big man, a familiar predatory shadow crouched on top of Alexander's legs, hands slowly twisting his prey's shooting arm in directions it wasn't meant to go.

"Don't they teach you to carry secondary concealed fire arms, Lieutenant?"

Reese had a hard time coping with the noise of breaking bones. "Didn't plan on shooting anyone …" He winced.

"Seems someone else had other plans."

"I CAN'T STAND IT! AH GAWD!"

Ryan stood up leaving the fat man crying on the floor, eyes glazed in trauma, the kind of trauma that Reese knew you don't get over. Alexander's right foot was twisted to face the same as his left, his knee on his left was twisted off angle, and his arm, was facing the wrong way.

"Did you cripple this man?" he asked in a moment of horror.

The silhouette looked back down at Alexander. "Him?" He motioned to the whimpering man. "Not if he works extra hard in rehabilitation." He placed his hands in his leather coat pockets and began pacing toward the street facing window.

Reese heard the familiar thump of motorcycle boots and took a moment to find relief that a man like Rodney wouldn't be bothering anyone again. With that, he took a deep calming breath, letting some of the anxiety go. "So I'm assuming that you didn't come all this way to save my ass." He followed the familiar figure with lightening eyes.

The shadow grunted in a private amusement. "You'd be surprised." He replied with dark humor.

"Be still my heart … should I send a card?"

"No, but I'll settle for information … I got a break in the Ellison case." Ryan opened the window.

There was a grim smirk on the beleaguered lieutenant's face. "Right … I'll be in contact." He took off his fedora and ran a hand through his hair. When he turned he found the vigilante watching him with haunted green eyes, crouched on the window sill, half outside already.

"Congratulations officer, not every man gets to cheat death."

Reese gave a terse laugh and was momentarily distracted by the sound of SWAT boots entering the building. "Yeah, I guess I lived through tonight, didn't I?" He sighed heavily.

"It's a first … for any timeline."

His eyes narrowed in confusion the detective whirled around. "What?" he asked.

But no one was there.

* * *

The sun was shining brightly over the busy city. Everyone was like worker ants running from one job to the next; each one in their own little world, built on dreams and practicality. None of them seemed to know what was coming for them. Maybe there were a few out there that might feel it in their guts- the occasional chill down the spine seeing a news story about tech companies or a secret moment of fear watching a TV show about cyborgs. But no one knew the sheer weight of the future, the streets littered with ash and skulls. On that front Derek Reese couldn't fault them, couldn't hold it against them. He used to be one of them.

It seemed strange that he could remember some days, what it was going to be like; what it was going feel like. He wondered if he were the only one who ever felt like that; if he would be the only one who ever could feel like this. Waking up, flicking on the tube and saying the headlines before the anchor could. Like some sort of twisted deja vu. John smirks, the metal tilts her head in disinterest, but Sarah … Sarah watches him with worried eyes. She doesn't like people knowing things she doesn't. Or maybe it's something else. Maybe it's a private fear that he was going to crack; crack from knowing what's coming and the lose himself trying to stop it … like she had.

Sometimes Derek misses stuff on the television, like a movie star with a surprise pregnancy, or a football score he confuses with another from next year. It didn't bother him; it seemed so long ago. Like a dream. But today, he wouldn't forget today. Derek saw today as the day the dream ended and real life began.

He had woken to find his mother gone without a note or a phone call. He had shrugged it off, showered, and poured Kyle his cereal. You know, it's funny, but Derek didn't really read the newspaper, Jesus, what twelve year old did? But Kyle had seen a cartoon that morning, before Derek had woken up, and he had said that grown-ups read the newspaper. He had shaken his head, and lifted the headline, and he would never be the same again. There on the front page, Detective Lieutenant Jonathan Derek Reese killed in the line of duty trying to save a couple of stripper's brats. He credited that moment as the moment he became the man he is today. Maybe even the day he became a man, because he had to.

But waking up this morning in Jesse's hotel room, he feared seeing that paper on the nightstand. Maybe he could've avoided it if he had slept at the house. But after what had happened with Sarah the other night, and John and the machine at each other's throats, he needed some solace. However, even when he had tried to focus on Jesse, and tried to make up for the shrinking feeling in his heart, Derek didn't care. He tried to. Tried to focus on his relationship and ignore that paper sitting on the table like it was the big ugly son of a bitch in every corner of a dive, looking for a fight and finding you. But the truth was he couldn't ignore it anymore. He had a small talk with Jesse about to do lists and expectations for the week- conversations that he thought might bring him comfort. But he found them so empty when some else was on his mind ever since the other night, someone who shouldn't be. So eventually he would slide on that stool across from the coffee-sipping, familiar stranger with his girlfriend's face, and see the headline of the paper when she picked it up.

Education Bonds.

He tore it out of her hand without thinking and warning. He flipped through the pages as she looked on with surprise at the desperate action. He had memorized that paper. Had read everything about what happened yesterday a thousand times since he was twelve, it was all there- the comic strips, the political cartoons, the war in Afghanistan. It was all there; all but the headline that his father was dead.

To think that yesterday he was dreading this morning; brooding over the fact that he would be on this earth to relive the death of his father twice in a lifetime. He looked up every news website, in every paper, nothing, no mention of his death. Somehow Detective Lieutenant Reese has survived the night he confronted low-life scum Rodney Alexander.

Now sitting outside a diner in Van Nuys, watching the chrome, old style architecture and the glint in the glass, he felt like a bastard. Derek thought he should be happy that his dad was alive, that somehow in this timeline Jonathan Reese is facing a potential lawsuit for police brutality rather than eternity in the ground. But all it did was make him feel so out of place and lonesome. Now that his father would live a little longer, Derek alone would carry that memory, that loss. Maybe tomorrow he'll wake up and be the noble son of bitch who can take that on his shoulders, but today he gave a moment to selfishness. That twelve year old, who shares his name, who loves the hell out of Star Wars and watches cartoons with his brother, and makes him swear to never tell anyone on pain of the rack. That Derek Reese would grow up with all the love and care of a complete family. While Derek the soldier lost his, all of them: his father, his mother, and his brother. The thirty two year old selfish bastard's only family was a teenager with his brother's grin, who hated Derek's guts for good reasons and a hard ass GI Jane, Pin Up who hated the soldier's guts for an even better reasons after what happened on Halloween.

He wouldn't linger too much longer on the time traveler's remorse, but his time was cut short even more by the arrival of an old ford pickup truck. Its aquamarine paint was rusting and flaking off with age as a door opened, nine or ten empty beer cans clattered to the ground. He knew it was the one he was waiting for, when the four passengers piled out. The lead was a big black guy, with a mess of tight, crunchy black curls wearing a letterman's jacket with the same school colors that John and the Metal attended. There were two skinny guys and, of course the big one. Derek remembered the big one, because with the crew cut and wide eyes, he looked like a pig.

He watched them as they sashayed into the joint; laughing, and swaggering as if they were something. A moment later a couple ran out of the restaurant, the woman was screaming, and the guy covering his head with a newspaper, despite the lack of anything falling from the sky. Customers began trickling out, though no one called the cops. As people rushed past the truck, he watched through the windows as a familiar scene played out in front of him: two bag boys filling a sack from the register, the black guy standing by the door armed with a baseball bat, and fat boy eating off plates … at least he had the decency to eat the order ups. Then Derek could feel it in his gut, the old emotions and the adrenaline coursing through him.

His mind was shouting "Now! Now!" But it wasn't this Derek that it was talking to. His mind was shouting at the twelve year old boy who had taken his little brother to a Sci-fi themed diner the day he found out their father had died. He wasn't supposed to tell Kyle. Their mother had made that very clear over the phone. He remembered eating that grief, like being crushed under a thousand weights as he had taken his baby brother to a place he had always wanted to go. Then these thugs had busted in.

Even with their dad alive, he guessed it was always meant to be that the Reese boys went to this establishment today. He watched the idiot boy, filled with the heroism of four generations of Reese war stories and a primal hatred for thugs like these that killed his father, spring out from behind the bar and break the all-state offensive lineman's nose with a pan. Derek smirked like it was yesterday; his arm gave a tremor in muscle memory of the impact. His body still felt every blow, breaking the ketchup bottle on bag boy number one's face, not knowing what was tomato sauce and what was blood. He remembered getting hit in the stomach with a bat by the ringleader, and being stomped on by all four of them- the impacts against his back, his arms protecting his head, and his legs.

Hazel green eyes watched calmly as the teenage thugs exited the building, sack full from the breakfast rush. They peeled out of the parking lot and Derek pushed off the parking break and followed.

They may be tearing up asphalt, but they weren't hard to follow. Their jock ringleader wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but he was smart enough to head toward a rural area. He kept on their trail for a while, till he caught up to them near the hills. Their Ford piece of shit was exactly as it was supposed to be- a set up car. They ditched it at an old abandoned fuel station and garage that looked about used up even all the way back in the sixties when it was closed down.

They piled into the shiny sportscar, which he was sure was one some university looking to sign a star receiver leased for the ringleader. He had an entire career ahead of him, Derek thought as he moved his truck to pursue. But when you're surrounded by people telling you how special you are, maybe some guys think they're untouchable. The decor of the car, the audacity of the rims, showed that this was a kid who came from the slums and stole as a way of life. With his athletic ability and playing for a much better school than Lincoln Heights, he was paving himself a better future. But he guessed everyone knew the saying about old habits. Showing new friends how badass he was. Derek wondered what this superstar's new friends thought when he sped beside them and drove the sportscar off the road.

There was the stench of fried motor works, when the soldier got out of the truck with a slam of his door. He could see the red, sleek automobile nose down in a field of reeds. Three of the teenagers got out of the car- bag boy one, with glass still in his skin, piggy with an off-angle nose and a shirt covered in blood, and the ringleader, covered in dirt.

He knew their faces; they were as much a part of who he was as the newspaper. Getting beat up in that diner taught him that there were no such things a as heroes. He learned that there were survivors and dead men. His father was a hero and he was shot in the head by some two bit loser. He thought he could be a hero, and all he'd done was give his mother something else to cry about that day in the hospital. He learned that all that mattered was holding on to what you got, no matter what. He learned to hold onto your life by hiding in sewers as the world crumbled, and holding onto your brother by keeping him safe. But mostly, it was holding onto your sanity … by confessing to the machines in the basement of a house.

Derek Reese wasn't trying to prove he was a hero when he picked up the baseball bat in the tall grass and threw it to the jock criminal. He was simply looking to put a period on twenty years of unfinished business.

Most people think that in a fight possessing a weapon was an advantage. But Derek had been in enough tussles to know that it's only an advantage if you know how to use it. The superstar swung the bat like a Neanderthal, clumsy and uneven. Derek ducked under it and used the spring from his legs to propel a fist into rock hard abs in the lower quads. The sound he made knew that there was enough time to deal with the other two before he got up.

Bag boy number one came rushing at him with raised fists and a yell like an extra from Braveheart. Picking up the wooden bat, Derek jammed the tip into the kid's open vertebra, and flipped the bat around, swinging it like a true hitter into his side. The teen stumbled off and fell into the grass.

Piggy, however, was surprisingly silent for a big lineman. The big corn-fed boy lifted his two large fists like hammers and brought them down. Derek blocked them by turning the bat horizontal and gripping it hard with both hands, meeting the strong blow. He was much stronger than he looked, but the bat still thumped to the grassy floor out of his grip. The big lineman's hands gripped Derek's jacket and he drove the soldier back into his truck. He felt an agonizing ache in his back as it stiffened against the door handle. Rearing back, he smashed his head into the big boy's already damaged nose. Fresh blood spilled out like a river, filling the cedar thick air with an iron smell. Now reeling, Derek grabbed the big guy by the legs and drove him to ground, where hardened fists smashed into an already damaged face.

Feeling the anger and muscle reflexes of murder take hold, he could've killed that boy, had there not been the surprisingly strong forearm that locked around his neck and pulled him off. Bag boy seemed to have recovered and held Derek in a choke hold, sputtering for air, while the ringleader picked up the bat and swung. Derek growled as it hit across his lower chest, thunking against ribs. When the star reached back to swing again, the resistance fighter pivoted, so that the strike hit the bag boy in the arm, freeing Derek to throw a full sole of his shoe into the black teen's pelvis and propel him backwards, slamming the bag boy into the truck. Picking up the bat he turned and slammed the meat of it into the skinny teen's arm, hearing it crack and then dislocating his shoulder with another swing.

When he turned back, superstar was on his knees, cradling his mid-section. Derek put all of his anger and emotions eating at him for twenty years in the swing that knocked out four teeth and sent the boy to the floor.

CLICK!

He turned to find that piggy had a snub nose pistol. It was pointed at Derek with shaky hands of immense pain. "You son of bitch … I'm going to …"

SHEEK SHEEK!

"What are you going to do with that pistol?"

Both combatants, bleeding on the side of the rural road whirled to find a black, tussle haired, fierce woman, with a dark jacket over a long hemmed grayish green army tank top and jeans. She was pointing a Remington tactical shotgun, and green eyes filled with death at the pistol armed teenager.

The big kid dropped his piece automatically and ducked his head defensively, looking like a big turtle trying curl into its shell. Sarah Connor, who seemingly came out of nowhere, didn't look too happy at Derek as she hiked down into the tall grass and began searching and collecting from the robbers with hard demands at rifle point. Letting the tension leave his body, the soldier dropped the bat with a thump and leaned back into the truck, closing his eyes. When he opened them, Sarah was coming back toward him, as the mewling robbers, crawled away slowly with nothing but their clothing and busted car.

There was a tiny satisfaction in seeing them crawl till Derek winced and cradled his left ribs with his right hand. Sarah came up to him with a snub nose pistol in her waistband, three ID's, two hundred dollars in cash from their wallets and the sack with the stolen loot from the diner. Something in the way she was holding them said that they all belonged to her now.

"You following me now?" He bit at her, before she could start on him.

There was a silent outrage that he would be mad at her for showing up. "Maybe I always have." She shot back.

When they traded glares it was hard on Derek not to see those green eyes in the new light he had first seen in them at Halloween. It was hard looking into them without remembering her embrace, the electricity of that moment. She must have felt it too, because she averted her eyes for a moment, both breathing shallowly.

Sarah turned to her surroundings "What is this?" She motioned to the bodies and the wrecked car "What is this all about?"

Derek breathed harshly and told the truth with a heavy sigh.

"Closure."

* * *

It was a fairly nice house that was just out of the way from any others in the neighborhood. Not exactly the suburbs, but not really inside what Ryan would consider the city. It was sort of in between the hills and the cheaper homes. The white colored house was charming, and homely, middle class, maybe slightly upper. But then he remembered that this was a hand me down home. Paid off long ago by some Reese who could afford it. Honestly the time traveler didn't know much about that, he didn't really come from a time period in which money meant anything, but he knew all about inheritance, any property he owned came from the old man ... knowing his dad, Ryan was sure he was now in possession of a ton of things he didn't even know he owned.

Parking his sleek motorcycle on the curb, and removing his visor helmet, he felt uncomfortable leaving it so open and exposed. Like everything else in this time period, he was caught between being paranoid that everything could be monitored, and remembering that there wasn't really anyone hunting him. He originally planned on parking the racing cycle a couple of blocks back and come in at the Reese's backdoor. But something about that plan didn't seem right … these were his great-grandparents and though he was raised in a world of rubble, machines, and deformed cannibals, he was well versed in educate. He didn't want to be rude, a poor showing from their only descendent in the future.

The front porch was wooden, with swinging bench attached to chains from the porch cover. Ryan paused and frowned. It wasn't uncommon in this time period, and he had seen them in pictures, but in person … he removed his hand from a coat pocket and pushed it lightly. It creaked swaying back and forth, like a swing … but with a bench? He didn't understand the purpose of it, but he figured it was there for a reason. With a quirked eyebrow he walked back to the door and pressed the doorbell. A knock would be louder, but it was a lot more intimidating in nature, and he didn't want to scare anyone, especially at night.

When the door opened he was greeted by someone he never really pictured when he thought about it. The very beautiful woman, who was much younger looking then Ryan expected for a mother of a twelve year old. She had long tresses of silverish blond hair that was styled in a modern echo to a 70's vintage and yet fit her so well. It actually made Ryan feel a little self-conscious when they seemed to have the same hairstyle, though his raven curls naturally parted the way they did, while it was obvious she styled hers. She wore a collarless red Mexican linen shirt with a v neck, thin sleeves just off her milky shoulders. The front of her shirt was tucked into her jeans, and there was a brown western belt prominent around her waist. But it was her gentle, kind blue eyes that captured Ryan's attention.

"Hello?" She smiled, her voice matched her eyes. Ryan shook his head, obviously transfixed on a great grandmother he never thought about in his entire life. Luckily she only smirked at his socially awkward reaction to her.

"I have an appointment with Jonathan …" He composed himself.

The woman snickered under breath. "Appointment?" She tilted her head teasingly.

Ryan felt stupid. "Well …" he finally broke his grim façade to smirk with her. "If I said I'd like to talk to him it would seem strange this late at night." He recovered.

She nodded in agreement. "Yeah, it is a little weird." She laughed. The time traveler had only considered this woman a part of him for a minute and he already felt a pang of sadness, that this beautiful slice of life had been long forgotten in his future.

"Amy …" A familiar voice called from inside. "Stop teasing him …" Ryan eyes narrowed at Jonathan's voice. Amy Reese's only reaction was to give a mischievous toothy grin and lean her head against the door playfully.

"We've been expecting you Batman." She wiggled her eyebrows.

He tried to fix her with a glare at the name, but he really couldn't when she looked at him that way. He guessed there was a reason that Jonathan could see the things he had and not be affected as deeply as the rest of the men in their family.

When she stepped aside, he nodded in thanks as he passed her. The floors were wooden, and a staircase was the first thing in his sight line. To his right was a dining room, to his left was a living room. There was a smell of something sweet in an oven, mixed with a fresh pine cleaner for the polished floor, and female perfume.

Jonathan appeared from inside the living room walking into the hallway. He was hatless, and coatless … something Ryan had never seen him without. It almost made him seem more human, in his open button down, t-shirt, and blue jeans. Ryan hadn't seen too much of the Derek Reese from another timeline who helped raise his father, his only exposer was when he was with Sarah. But he could tell where the resistance soldier got his dressing sense. In the light for the first time Ryan couldn't get over how much the detective reminded him of his old man … in the soft glow of the hallway, it was sort of distracting.

"Wow …" Jonathan stopped and gave him a once over. "I guess this is the first time I've ever really seen what you look like." Ryan kept a stone face of disamusement at being studied. He watched the man observe his leather coat, the long sleeve over the t-shirt, old jeans, half hazardly tucked into grimy motorcycle boots. Ryan had shaved earlier, a five o'clock shadow only enhanced his features.

"You know …" Reese scrunched his face. "A week ago … I saw this woman at the diner in Santa Monica … you look just like her." He sounded thoughtful.

Ryan narrowed his eyes. "So I look like a woman, do I?" He asked flippantly.

"Nice …" Amy sighed with a shake of her head closing the front door.

Catching on to what he said, Jonathan stuttered as Ryan let him hang himself, looking around the house. "Not what I meant to say …" When he turned to his wife for support, she shook her head and pursed her lips. With a sigh he hung his head. "So … Ellison …" He shifted subjects, Amy patting his shoulder comfortingly.

"Somewhere we can talk?" Ryan removed a file from inside his leather coat. Jonathan nodded and led the way to the dining room. When they stopped at the table, Amy placed a hand on Ryan's shoulder, turning he watched her walk to the kitchen entrance and gave him a very maternal smile before going inside.

"Don't worry about her …" Jonathan smirked. "She likes you." He crossed his arms. Ryan lingered on the kitchen a moment and blinked, wondering if she knew something … even if she didn't know about time travel and machines … if there was something of her or her husband that she recognized in him?

He almost let it melt his stony exterior, but he fought it, opening the file. "This is our man …" he pulled out a screen capture of the big mass of muscles, built like a truck, arms and legs thick as tree trunks, and the chrome mask. Reese slid the picture closer to him and studied it.

"This is the biggest man, I've ever seen … Can steroids do this?" he asked.

"I've seen lab experiments do a lot with them … but never something this big … or this intelligent."

Jonathan grunted. "Where are we supposed to find a guy like this?" he scratched is head.

Ryan began spreading papers out from the manila folder. "I analyzed anything that could lead us to him …" He said distractedly.

"His mask?" The Detective picked up an old black and white picture of a replica of the chrome cover on the monstrous man's face.

Ryan nodded. "It's a Spartan Ceremonial mask … used at coronations …" He paused a moment as if in physical pain. "and weddings." He cleared his throat.

"You sound pretty sure …"

"I should be. I've seen enough of them."

"Study ancient Greece in college?"

"Something like that … this picture is one of six masks found in a cave during a Nazi dig a couple of miles from the ruins of old Sparta." He pulled out a leaflet with old scribbled writing on it in German. "Hitler sent one to each of his favored generals during the World War II … Most of them found their way into Grecian exhibits in some very famous museums. One is in the London Metropolitan, New York City, the Smithsonian, Athens … all but one." He folded his arms. "An SS commander, who fled the tribunals, sold his for some start up cash, and a ticket to Peru. It changed hands a few times, an East German antique store, then in the private collection of an OSS station chief, then on display at the west Berlin embassy … it eventually ended up in a Los Angeles auction house in 1947."

"Who purchased it?"

"A Josephine Brydon, for six thousand dollars, No one has seen it since." He pulled out a copied photo of an ink written deed to the property purchased.

When Ryan looked up, Reese looked like he had seen a ghost. "I don't believe it …" he said. "Twenty six years …" He shook his head.

"What's that?" Ryan tilted his head. "You know this woman?" He asked.

"Do I?" Jonathan laughed. "Do I know this woman?" It was rhetorically. "I don't just know her … I know all of them." He ran his hands through his hair as if he was waking up from a long slumber.

"Know who?"

"The Brydons …" He began to pace away as his wife entered the kitchen with a plate of cookies. "I'll be back in a moment." He pecked her lips and strode out of the dining room, leaving Ryan confused.

Blue eyes turned to her peer and she whistled with amusement. "You got him on a role now." She placed the tray away from the papers. "If I could spend one year of my life without hearing that name, I'd be a happy woman." She bit into an M&M cookie.

Ryan quirked an eyebrow. "You know what he's talking about?" he asked catching the stealth figure of a moppy haired little five year old sneaking behind the legs of the slender beauty.

She sighed. "Century City and the Brydons." She made it sound like a curse.

"Century City?" He asked as the five year old took two cookies and began moving toward the kitchen again.

"You know … the Urban myth of Century City?" She asked.

"No not really." He shrugged.

"It was a small town outside of Los Angeles. It had Cobblestoned streets, picturesque, really Thomas Kinkaid sounding if you ask me." She stuck her tongue out in distaste that made Ryan smile. "But there was a ton of futuristic technology? You know … real rich person paradise … but apparently some Doctor to the Brydon family or whatever blew a dam and sank it and everyone in it under a lake?" She shrugged. Unlike some other people who would've explained it, there was no condescending tone. Ryan felt almost young again in the sight of her grins.

"You've been there?" He asked.

"No … I was two or three when it went … under …" She trailed off distractedly before reaching back without looking, and pulling a giggling little boy in front of her. She took one of the cookies from the boy with a smile on her lips. "One." She gave him a reproachful look.

Little Kyle Reese, looked at his feet. "The other is for Derek …" He replied innocently.

"Oh really …?" She playfully hauled him up from under his arms to eye level. They looked alike, more alike than father and son, same nose, eyes, and smile. Finally when the boy looked up, he giggled. "Just what I thought …" She dumped him on his feet. "Go to bed." She ordered, and then chased after the little boy as he bounced out of the dining room.

It was a true wrench for the man to see his grandfather and his great-grandmother so happy, knowing what could be coming over the horizon. It wasn't such a shock to see Kyle as it could've been, he had seen him in the future, fought beside him … even saved his life a few times. Kyle was always just a bit sad, solitary, even amongst his friends, clinging to his private love in a picture. There were times, not a lot, but times Ryan was grateful he had no memories of his mother, no beautiful face with comforting smiles, playfully chasing him, hauling him upstairs under arm, to a storm of laughter. He was glad that there were no memories of happy times to torture him, when she was gone. Now Ryan wondered if all those times Kyle was sitting by himself he was thinking of his mother and her cookies, and how he wanted her back, if only for a moment.

A new face appeared in the dining room. The boy was older, and was obviously from first look more Reese than Amy. He wore a long sleeve baseball shirt, and black pajama pants same as his brother. He had the same cropped hair as his father, but unlike his older self his stare was a lot less intense. Derek Reese was hobbling on a crutch, with a cast on his ankle. Two black eyes, and a bandage on his head.

The boy gave the stranger a glance and nodded. "Hey …" He grunted in acknowledgement.

"Evening …" Ryan replied, watching him with sudden interest. "What happened to you?" he asked.

Derek grabbed a cookie. "Got into a fight with a semi …" He replied biting into his mother's treat.

Ryan smirked. "How was that?" He tilted his head.

With a response of an easy going shrug, the twelve year old turned to look at the family guest. "About what I expected." He gave a roughshod smile, which would always be trade mark Derek Reese. Kyle had always been a point of fascination for most of his life … but recently, Ryan had found himself questioning things about Derek, this man who was helped raise his father. He never knew him that well, but he had heard alot about him from John himself, though not the Derek Ryan came to know.

"How did you get that scar?" The boy countered. He knew he meant the thin line cut by a razor sharp blade.

When the soldier closed his eyes, he could still see the emotionless face, a perversion, a blasphemy. Out of all the people they turned into machines, that legendary face … it was pure abomination. He could still feel the impact of his sword against hers. His arms felt sore remembering the relentless duel in the equivalent of his childhood home, once considered the safest place on earth. But above all else, he remembered the tears in his opponent's eyes after she struck him down.

"Sword duel ..." He answered Derek. There was sorrow in his voice that he couldn't mask.

"Really?" The boy was somewhere between disbelieving and completely enthralled. "Who were you fighting?" He asked with a child's curiosity.

"Someone who should've killed me ... But didn't." After reliving the fight that cost him so much he paused. Ryan, being a twelve year old himself once, it probably wasn't what a kid wanted to hear and it might have been a little too heavy for a child in either place. But there was a maturity to this kid Ryan didn't expect.

"Did you win?" He asked.

Ryan shifted his jaw. "No" His face fell, it was hard for him to admit.

Derek just nodded. "Neither did I." He commiserated.

With a snort of camaraderie, Ryan looked down at him. "Best thing about thugs … they always give you second chances." He advised … maybe not something the boy's mother would appreciate, but a lesson his father always taught him. Never let them see you run, and never give up.

Derek nodded. "Someday, I'll get'em back." There was a vengeful smile. After a moment and a sigh he turned to Ryan "It looks cool … you know, your scar." He offered in his parting comments.

"Thanks … I'm sure you'll have some war stories tell when it's all over."

"Sherri Appleton already signed my cast when I told her I fought off robbers."

"It's a good start."

Derek smiled. "Yeah …" He seemed more confident as he limped away. Ryan's eyes casted a dark shadow in young Derek's wake. He hadn't made the war stories comment as something for the boy to look forward too.

"I'm sorry"

Ryan turned to find Amy in the kitchen where she had been for a while. she was studying him with perceptive eyes. Her gaze was like a chilled Tibetan wind, with nothing to protect him but a thin coat. She went right through him.

"Don't be … kids are curious." He offered lightly.

She shook her head. "Not about Derek, about the woman who did that to you." She was sincere in her voice. She dragged her finger across her eye to illustrate her point.

Ryan clenched up inside. "I didn't say it was a woman …" He shot at her. He felt like an ant under a microscope, small with nothing he could hide, under a powerful magnifying gaze.

"You didn't have too." Amy said comfortingly. "Who was she?" She asked.

Her great grandchild didn't see any reason to hide it from her, when she was already reading him like a book. "Someone I loved." His gaze drifting away to a field of stars, unmarked by clouds over the open ocean and a face he had only dreamed of, sleeping next to him. When she turned over and wrapped her arm around him ... pressing her face against his maternally. For a moment he knew what it was like to have a family.

"What happened to her?"

"She died … a long time ago."

"Is she why you do this?"

"I made a vow to her ..."

"What was that?"

"Never again."

* * *

The first thing that anyone ever wondered about the little business on the side of the street, with the concrete sidewalk and palm trees in front of it, was if the place was an Irish pub or coffee house. It was wood paneled and dark inside, not unlike a bar, and decorated with shamrocks and golden harps to let you know that it was Irish. But the espresso machine and the curly haired kid with the hipster glasses, skinny jeans, and sweater screamed coffee house.

Derek was never sure what the place was himself and, to be honest, never gave it too much thought. Sure, there were a couple of day drinkers in there with foaming, dark glasses of Guinness. But, in the same vein, Derek remembered when his dad would bring him, the best chocolate drinks he had ever drunk had come from here. . He remembered sitting in the same booth he was in now, with a comic book open, or a video IPOD, while his father would talk with a couple of old retired cops. Usually it was for information while he was at the Cold Case division. There were a lot of memories locked away in this place.

He remembered the day he had discovered girls was here. Alyson O'Neil, a red headed, freckled, ivory skinned waitress. She was a skinny girl, wearing tight blue jeans, and a spaghetti-strap tank top. She had a heavy, Scottish accent, which was hard to understand. She seemed nice; always smiling at him when he caught her eye. He hadn't been like the other guys his age who thought girls were gross. He simply didn't have an opinion on them, till that one Saint Patrick's Day. Kyle was sitting on their table at the regular booth; his mother playing patty cake with him. He was bored as his dad talked with the other guys. There was always something about Saint Patty's day that was like a cop's national holiday. But it was that moment, through all the shit that happened to him since: Judgment Day, the war, Kyle missing. He'll never forget the day Alyson O'Neil, dropped her pen, and bent over to get it, and he saw the t-shaped, shiny green of her thong. It was like he had become someone else, like something bigger had happened to him, like he was seeing the world for the first time in a new light. It was that young woman's thong and the talk with his dad afterward when his mom seemed to notice him staring that turned him on to puberty.

Now, all these years later, when he forgot so many things about this world, that same pretty Scottish girl set two steaming cups of hot chocolate down on the table and gave him that same smile from his childhood. But this time she added a little more sexuality to it. However the minute she turned to his companion, the girl cleared her throat and walked off, a common reaction after coming under his partner's gaze. Derek watched the waitress go, remembering his father letting him down easy over the thong incident.

"Is this a coffee house or a bar, Reese?"

Sarah Connor was looking around at the place with curious eyes. It was like the Seaside Diner in Santa Monica all over again. She was trying to be stern, but he could tell she loved the hell out of these little places he took her and John to.

He smirked, taking his mug. "Couldn't say …" He paused to share the sight of familiar childhood surrounding as he tipped his mug to drink. "Probably a bit of both, knowing the Irish." He made a humored scoff. But the minute he took a sip of the hot liquid, the nutmeg felt like Christmas lathered on his taste buds.

He couldn't help but watch Sarah sip the chocolate he had ordered for her. He knew the minute she experienced the flavor burst, because she closed her eyes and let out a small sigh and the hard façade fell. When it happened he realized he had never noticed how beautiful she looked … then he grunted and focused on the next sip.

"Like it?" He asked.

The raven haired woman looked back, and was completely unguarded. She looked so young and full of fire inside, no walls, no shield of surliness. He was like a moth to the flame, an unmoving gaze of rock. He was swept up in her, hypnotized in what was behind the mother of destiny mask. She avoided his eyes and when she returned the protection was back.

"It's alright …" She shrugged, eyes growing more serious by the minute; a hard expression shifting on him again.

He took a deep breath and shook whatever the hell that was off and grunted again. "Suit yourself." He muttered into his cup. Yet, that masterpiece of hot liquid compelled him not to give it up that easy.

"You've had better?" he asked.

Call him ridiculous, but he almost got the idea that Sarah was not touching her mug now, scared of what it would do to her. When he saw that she was scared of actually having a mug of hot chocolate, because he might see her human side, he laughed.

"Here and … there." She let the last word slip in like an assassin's knife.

He scoffed. "Where's here and there?"

Sarah took the mug and looked at it a moment, her eyes seemed to almost glaze over as if she were somewhere else, someone else. "Madam Pompadours Chateau …" She blinked. "It looked like an authentic French café." There was true happy little grin as Sarah talked. "When I was little, we lived on a hill above it, and when I looked out my window it was like a real life Van Gogh painting." She bit her lip in her child like wonder.

Both were quiet a long moment, the sound of soft Celtic music playing over the scene. Derek knew the name of that coffee house. He had read about it before, in his father's cold case notes. But that couldn't be right, because Madam Pompadours Chateau was in …

"You mean Madam Pompadours Chateau, as in the one in Century City?" He asked in confusion.

Sarah nodded slowly. "I'd never forget the smell of Maurice's pastries in the morning, on the way to school." She replied dreamily.

There was something not right about the story. "You lived in Century City?" he asked frowning.

His voice took her out of whatever reverie had taken control of her. "What?" She asked.

"Century City," Derek repeated, leaning closer to her across the both. Sarah seemed uncomfortable, not only at the action and his tone, but she looked suddenly lost, like she wasn't sure where she had gone.

She suddenly got aggressive. "What? If you don't believe me, go there for yourself." She snapped, folding her arms to her chest and for a moment seemed more frightened of herself than of Derek's expression

Derek shook his head. "Century City?" He sounded puzzled. "It was obliterated in '83 … whole town and everyone who ever lived there is at the bottom of a big ass lake in some damn lost forest." He examined her with hard eyes. "No one has seen that place in twenty six years. The feds closed it off, broke and rerouted all the roads away from it. I mean … I wouldn't know anyone who even knows the location anymore. It's an urban myth." When he was done, Sarah looked as if she had seen a ghost.

"How do you know?" There was a very petulant tone to her voice.

Derek frowned at the sheer childlike defensiveness of her reaction. "My dad spent most of my childhood and all of Kyle's baby years trying to solve the Chrome Mask murders that happened there in the early eighties. He couldn't find one person who knew where it was … Christ, weren't you in high school or something at the time?" He challenged leaning back to give the woman space.

But it seemed that bring all of this back only confused her, like she was remembering something else. Her eyes were glazed again, but only for a second, then she shook her hand and pinched the bridge of her nose, eyes squinched as if in pain. When she opened them, those green eyes were severely intense for a moment, and if ever there was a picture of a freight train running through someone's mind, it was the picture of Sarah Connor in front of Derek.

"Hey …" He leaned forward and hesitated to move a hand toward her. But he stopped when she took a deep breath and sat back in the booth. "What the hell was that about?" He asked. She really worried him for a moment, like she was going to stroke out or go into a seizure. When he didn't get answer there was a long pause between them. He knew that whatever it was, he wasn't going to get an answer, so he let it go.

When she turned back there was a look of intensity between the two that always seemed to happen when they were alone together. Sarah liked to read people, tried to get a handle on someone without needing to talk to them. But, by the same token, what she tried to do to others she hated others to do to her. So when they looked at each other, Sarah with those bright unforgiving glares, and Derek with his soulful, unfazed alien looks that cut through brick, it was an intense showdown that was never intended.

Sarah was the first to balk, looking down at the dented wooden table. "It's been a while ... Since we've talked" She nodded.

Both felt the emotions of those few moments, of the complicated moments of lightning pass through their systems, the scorch of passionate heat that possessed their very souls. Both took big swigs of the chocolate to chase the past away.

Derek shifted. "Yeah … I guess it has." He didn't take his eyes off her. "John and the metal …" He started.

"Still at each other's throats … escalating very badly." As she spoke about it, there was a phantom of stress on the woman's face.

Derek shook his head. "What the hell is going on?" he asked with a sigh.

With an irritated shrug she leaned back. "I don't know." She picked up a butter knife. "Something happened … something happened between the two of them." She took the knife in her hand like a practiced knife fighter.

"Yeah …" the soldier scoffed. "She tried to kill him." He watched her play with the knife.

Sarah shook her head. "No …" She bit her lip in troubled thought. "It's different … he's not the same. John's changed." She looked him in the eye. "After his birthday he was mad … but this time … there's darkness in him." She sounded scared for her child.

He knew what she was talking about, maybe even better than she knew. Derek saw that look in John's eyes before, in the future, a storm of madness and anger straddling determination and will. It would scare him to see his general in those moods. He was quiet, pent up … till he got to the battlefield. Then there was no mercy in him, no humanity, a true killer. In all the years he served in Tech-Com Derek never knew how to calm John down. He always praised luck that he didn't have to be the one to do it. But now as an Uncle, as this boy's only father figure, how was he supposed to even begin to understand these black moods, much less fix them?

"It's the Metal …" He looked away.

"Isn't it always?" It was rhetorical. "The way he responses to her; it's always extreme … it's like I don't know him sometimes." There was anger bubbling to surface. "And it's always in reaction to her." She growled.

He shifted his jaw. "Sometimes … boys just get that way." When Sarah snapped off a surprised look, he countered before she could speak. "I'm not saying it's not the metal, but I'm not saying everything is about her. Sometimes it's a lot of things built up in this one giant moment that changes you." Derek could still see his mother staring brokenly outside his hospital window, while Kyle lay next to him in the hospital bed clinging to him, begging him not to die. He did. That boy Derek Reese died, and someone else took his place. This man who raised a child, killed for food, and fought in a war.

"Is that what that was about back there? With those kids?"

He grinned for only a moment. She was good. All those times he watched her stare holes in his eye sockets and thought she couldn't see anything. Now it seemed she had him right where he thought she could never get him.

He took a deep breath. "My dad died last night." When he looked back to her it was obvious she wasn't expecting that. She looked down at a cup holder to recuperate. "He was shot in the head by some piece of shit coward named Rodney Alexander over a couple of stripper's brats." When she looked uncomfortable he smirked. "He was on duty. Remember, he's a police officer. Detective Lieutenant, LAPD." He clarified to which Sarah nodded, scrubbing away the awkwardness of the assumptions in her head.

He shook his head. "You know what that's like when you're a kid?" He didn't expect an answer. "To read in the paper that your dad was dead?" He scoffed. "Worst, you can't tell your little brother … because you don't know how." He looked straight ahead. "I remember telling Kyle that today was special. That today was going to be the day that we could do anything he wanted. I wanted to give him that one last moment to be a kid. To be happy, before everything changed." He nodded. "We went to this Sci-fi themed diner. He's talking up a storm about the Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon and asking what I wanted to get for breakfast, and all I wanted to do was crawl up in a ball and die." He cleared his throat. "Then four punk sons of bitches come in and begin robbing the place. Several people got out before the ring leader blocked the exits. I took Kyle and I hid behind the counter, and then I got stupid. I was filled up with stories of heroism from every Reese before me, and inspired with thoughts about what my old man would do. I took a frying pan and I busted one of their noses, and then I broke a ketchup bottle on another's face. I was putting up a hell of a scrap when I got hit in the stomach with a bat, and then they beat on me till I couldn't move." When he looked up Sarah seemed to be only watching him.

"So this was about revenge?"

"No …" He shook his head. "This is about waking up, and finding your mother broken, and your brother so scared of losing you he's never the same." He sighed. "It's about driving your mother to the brink of insanity, till she finds Rodney Alexander before the police can and guns him down in the street." He thought he could see the chill run up Sarah's spine. "That wasn't about revenge … it was about coming full circle, it was about facing the past." He nodded, but then paused. "It's about coming to terms with who I became." Sarah was quiet a moment.

"I don't remember …" She shrugged, tossing her hair uncomfortably. It was meant to be a response. "I can't remember my childhood." She met his eyes.

"You said that thing about your mother. About Halloween?" Derek frowned.

"Yeah, I dressed up for only her, because she's the only one who remembered any of my Halloweens and trick or treats." She replied. "When I was seventeen I had an accident and I was in a coma for six months. When I woke up in our cabin I barely knew my name." She looked emotional as she spoke "I sometimes have these flashes, like looking out over a balcony and seeing the twinkling lights of the most dazzling home town, smelling an old man's perfect pastries, an enchanting French café, a magical garden of red roses amongst angel statues, and a beautiful auburn haired Victorian porcelain doll I called _Jocelyn_ that was bought for me at _a Toy store on Pico with a giant mechanical teddy bear on the entrance cover_. But all of these flashes, they're like memories from a dream." She sounded wistful. She frowned and shuddered. "And sometimes there's an old woman, a great grandmother with dry hands … touching me … and a wet tongue caressing my ..." She swallowed hard. "Sometimes they're horrible nightmares about ..." She blinked away the images and traumatic physical sensations as she trailed off, shifting her jaw before blocking it out and continued.

She shifted gears. "My mother always told me stories about a father who worked in a mattress factory- a spiteful veteran from Vietnam. There was the one about a neighbor friend whose father worked at IBM and was hit by a bus and killed on her bike, because I wasn't with her. But I don't … I didn't feel anything. I still don't. All of her stories they were stories that happened to someone else. But those dreams … When I see those faces I feel things like they're a part of me." Her voice shook. "John used to ask me about my family, our family. But I couldn't tell him, because I don't know. I don't know what's real anymore." Sarah was quiet a beat. "So when you say that you woke up and were suddenly someone else, I know that feeling. I know what it's like to feel like you're not the person they call you." She nodded.

Derek was looking down at the table, absorbing all of what Sarah said. It was hard to explain, but something about her story touched him. He didn't know that about her, and he guessed it explained alot. Why it was so easy for her to adopt her lifestyle, to pick up and leave everything. Maybe when you didn't know who you were in the first place, you became what life made you.

He made a grunt and sniffed, blinking to find Sarah, knife in hand watching him, waiting for him to say something. That was when it occurred to him that he was the first … the first person Sarah ever told about this.

"John." He nodded.

"What?" She made a half sigh of annoyance at what she perceived to be code speak, closing her eyes. Obviously it was what she didn't want to hear.

He nodded as if repeating a mantra in his head. "John is real." He said in consolation. "There were plenty of times back during the fighting, the war that I didn't know what was right or what was real. What I was supposed to do, or be. That's when you take account of what's real. What you need to remember is your purpose." He looked off in the distance.

"Kyle …" Sarah tilted her head.

Derek blinked distractedly. "Used to be." There was an old wound in his tone that will never be healed.

"And now?" She asked.

Derek turned his gaze back to Sarah and glared at the accusatory look in her green eyes. There was a part of him that wondered if she really had been following him all this time. Maybe she knew about Jesse, and just kept it to herself, waiting to spring it on him at the right moment. But the raven haired woman looked more like she wanted to tell him something. A secret, which he came to realize wasn't a secret to anyone except to each other.

It was the longest time before he spoke. "Do you want me to tell you? Or should I wait till you think I need to hear it?" He asked.

"John told you … about Kyle?" She hesitated. He could see her hand against his stubble, their lips crashing toward each other in her eyes. "And Me?" She didn't shy away.

He shook his head. "Didn't have to." He drank from his mug. She nodded and put the knife down.

"Did you love him?"

"Yes …"

"Good." Sarah was taken by surprise. But he just smirked longingly. "I would have hated to be right …" He was now smiling.

"Right about what?"

"That you would punch him in the face and take his money."

They paused for a beat as Sarah broke into a toothy grin and then they began to laugh. They laughed at their lives, laughed at the world they lived in, and laughed in longing for those taken from them. They stopped when the waitress brought them cold glasses of dark Guinness as happy hour began.

"I'm sorry about your father …" Sarah finally said and took a moment to let the memory of their shared loved one linger happily.

"I'm sorry about your memories." He offered back. She accepted it with a head bow. "But even then you're still here …" He said encouragingly.

She smirked. "So are you." She nodded. Then she lifted her beer. "To Detective Lieutenant and Sergeant Reese" She toasted.

Derek lifted his beer. "To still being here …" He toasted back. They clinked the frosted glasses and brought them to their faces.

"Together …" Sarah said before she took a swig.

"To still being here … together." He agreed.

Both took a swig, not looking away from each other.

* * *

Ryan was standing in the hallway of the Reese's now quiet home, observing the pictures on an end table next to the staircase. He looked on the collection of frames with a strange fascination. For years when he thought of his family, he thought of his father, barrel chested, ruggedly handsome … brooding and silent. He thought of his grandmother. She was the epitome of the hard as nails, saint of motherhood to which all mothers looked too for guidance in the future. She had been his childhood hero, and the only god that John Connor prayed to. She was the pinnacle of his imagination for so many years, an idealized idol in a picture. But now, he looked on new faces that captured his imagination. They were people that he was a part of, who had a direct link to his very creation.

There was a photo of a handsome man, that Ryan thought looked almost exactly like Derek, in a police captain's uniform. He was Ryan's Great, Great Grandfather a man that never really existed in his mind till now. Next to it was a picture of a gorgeous Hispanic woman with tanned skin and long curling black hair spilling out of a straw cowboy hat. Her slim figure wore a western shirt, cowgirl style blue jeans, a silver belt buckle pressed under her navel, and western boots. There was a true strength and confidence in her dark eyes.

"Here …"

Jonathan walked by, snaring his attention as he passed. The lieutenant carried several large files in a plastic crate. Ryan gave the pictures a last look, before following Reese back into the dining room. The files looked old, pencil granite scribbled in cursive on some of the tattered manila folders. Something told the ex-resistance member that he wasn't supposed to have these.

The detective pulled out a glossy picture from inside a file, and placed it on the table next to the 1947 deed. "Josephine Booker Brydon" He announced to his partner. Ryan removed a hand from his coat pocket and picked up the photo, while Reese sat down at a chair. The woman in the picture had ivory skin that looked almost porcelain. Her long luxurious tresses of beaten gold hair fell down her back. Her bright green eyes seemed playful and mischievous like a wood sprite. There was something about her face that was hauntingly familiar, like … something from a dream.

"_And see her? That's grandmother … she's really pretty isn't she? … they say I look like her ghost. What do you think?" _

"_Yah!"_

"_Yeah?"_

"You alright? You look like you're seeing a ghost."

"I'm …"

"_They're playing one of her movies down at the matinée … what do you say little robin? You want to go see grandmother?"_

"_Yah!" _

"_Okay, let's get dressed."_

"I'm fine." Ryan felt like there was a transformer explosion in his head.

There were images of people and places that flashed through his mind, before it all went blank. When he squinted his eyes shut and squeezed the bridge of his nose, he saw a large opulent bedroom. There was a shelf with dolls and stuffed animals on a wall, and a shelf of books on the other. A hope chest pushed against a kings sized bed with white lace drapes over it. He saw a teenage girl in a long satin night gown with long raven ringlets, and a white shiny bow tied on top of her head. He was very young and she was holding him to her chest, showing him portrait paintings, they stopped right in front of a beautiful Josephine. The girl's green eyes were smiling and she kissed him on his head and nuzzled his matching curls. Ryan knew her face, even young and unmarked … but he couldn't find her name, it was like remembering something when you're drunk. He wasn't sure if it was even real.

"You sure?" Reese was unconvinced with a frown.

Ryan blinked and shook off the flash. "Always" he replied sternly.

Blinking with interest at the tone, the detective just shrugged. "Whatever you say …" He shook his head. Then a look of humored fancy spread over Jonathan's face as he looked between the picture of the woman in the picture and then Ryan several times.

The focus of the man's interest gave a serious glare. "Are you going to dance all night with your hand on my ass, or are you going to make a move?" He wasn't amused.

"It's just … it's kinda weird how much Josephine and you look …"

"Lieutenant … if compare me to another woman I'm going to start taking it offensively."

There was a ball-busting chuckle and a shake of his head as the police detective shuffled papers. "Alright …" he sighed again. "Josephine Brydon, Also known as Josephine Booker born 1929 in Fredericksburg Texas to a single mother Rachel Booker who joined the army as a nurse after she was nearly stoned by her family for having a baby out of wedlock. During the war she was stationed with the pacific fleet in Hawaii. While they were there, a movie producer noticed Josephine when she played rival's girlfriend as an extra for some teeny bopper surf serial. Several years of singing and dancing lessons, and Josephine appears in three mega Hollywood hits by the time the Japanese surrender." As Reese talked, he pulled out several laminated covers of Hollywood starlet magazines with enough cheesy 40's headlines to give you a headache.

Ryan shuffled through them, before stopping on a cover of their glit and glamour girl. She wore a black silk blouse, skirt, hat and veil as she was exiting a court house. "The Harlot of Hollywood." He read out loud showing the detective the headline.

"Yep …" About '46 our girl started getting into some trouble …" He was setting up more things for the files.

The vigilante detective quirked his eyebrow. "What kinked of trouble?" he asked with interest.

"The worst kind … marriage." He chuckled with self-amusement.

"She was married?"

"No, but her lovers were." He wiggled his eyebrows.

"Age of consent in Los Angeles was …?"

"Whatever it was, she wasn't it."

Ryan smirked. "Sounds like a powder keg to me." He announced, putting down the headlines.

"Oh yeah … If you've been in this lousy town long enough, you'll hear the same old story in any decade really. Some drunk fat cat at a yacht party tells another that some girl, this time being Josephine was the greatest piece of ass in the world a little too close to his wife, maybe even a rival … Dirty pictures surface of how the innocent little teenage queen Booker gets her call backs … soon enough some of the most powerful men in Hollywood are behind bars and getting supinated for statutory." He scratched his scalp.

"Josephine had a target on her back."

"Yeah, by April, she goes from pictures in GI wallets to getting let go from studio contracts for breaking about a dozen morality clauses … maybe she did some of it, maybe she didn't?" He shrugged.

"So the big wigs weren't going down for a seventeen year old, no matter how gorgeous."

"Yeah, the SAG really screwed her … figuratively … this time."

"Brydon?"

"About the time that her legal bills were stacking up, she met William Brydon … very good looking guy … a bit of a shut in, but he was a big fan."

"So it was love?"

"Well to be honest, to say that Josephine Booker loved anything for very long would be a bit of a stretch, from our girl's track record. Josephine seemed like a girl who fell in love fast and sort of let it putter out … based on the fact that she hadn't been single since she was twelve so …

"I'm assuming Brydon had money?

"Yeah and the name alone offered her protection … back in those days Brydon translated to "Untouchable" and I think Josephine saw him as a way to escape the magazines and still live her acquired lifestyle."

"That sounds like a scandal on its own."

"Old money, respected name, attached to the pretty face that had been passed around a lot lavished bedrooms, before her senior prom? Oh yeah … but William loved her." Reese handed Ryan a picture of the same youthfully beautiful face with the playfully mischievous eyes in a glamorous crimson mermaid dress. She was wrapped around a stern faced handsome man in a tuxedo. Lose blond curls were combed to the side. But Ryan noticed that the man's surprisingly happy crystal colored eyes, were the most striking of his features.

"They seem happy …" He didn't fail to notice that the name of the Goldstein auction house were the mask was bought behind them in the picture, but said nothing about it.

Jonathan scoffed. "They were the only ones …" He grunted. "No one on any side of the fence was happy to see Billy boy, the son of a powerhouse family and big rising star in the business world marry the slutty teenage queen … It looked bad for the Brydon name, and on the other side, Execs and their wives were not too pleased to see her get away." He shrugged.

"Happily ever after …"

"For several years … She moved in with him at the family mansion in Century City. They spent a couple of years in a whirl wind honeymoon faze, going all over the world. Some people weren't happy about the lavished expenses they were racking up. Also Bill was neglecting his career to spend time with her … started slipping out of the loop."

"So the Brydon's didn't like her?"

"One didn't in particular …" He handed him another picture. "Meet mommy dearest." Ryan took the picture of a woman that made him almost flinch.

She was a very stern older woman with hard wrinkles around the corners of her mouth and eyes. The wrinkles would have been more front and center had she not pulled her main of tangled silver hair back into a very constricting bun. Her looks suggested that she might have been a great beauty once, but now a lifetime of displeasure had drained all the light from her. Like her son, it was the woman's blue eyes that caught Ryan's attention … but unlike her son who was stern but genuinely happy around his wife … there was something almost hauntingly crazed, a storm of something almost sinister about them, that made the Outlaw's blood run cold.

"Ester Brydon …" Ryan noticed that Jonathan had been watching him. He wondered if he was waiting to see if he would flinch under the woman's gaze. When the ex-resistance fighter didn't the police Lieutenant seemed impressed.

Ryan tugged on his chin in thought. "I've seen some horrible stuff in my days, perpetrated by some very deranged psychopaths … but after all these years I've never seen anyone who's crazy could be smelled from a photograph." He tossed the two pictures on the dining room table.

His partner seemed interested in the tidbit about Ryan's past cases, but he blinked. "I once accidently left that picture out, Derek had nightmares for months." He chuckled at how unfunny that was.

"So Ester hated her …" Ryan folded his arms. "And she wanted her out?"

"It was too late … Josephine gave birth to a little girl in 1950, Rachel Brydon … named her after her mother. In those days you couldn't get a divorce when there were children involved, it would've been PR suicide. Plus Bill was in love … and Josephine began to grow up with motherhood."

"But …?"

The rest of the file Jonathan had been pulling from was slapped on the surface. Several black and white photos slid on the polished dining room table. The detective wandered away to the kitchen … apparently he could never look at the photos without something for the nerves.

The crime scene photos projected the scene of a woman that looked so familiar and yet not recognizable with eyes so blank where life had been so prominent. Her golden hair was a tangled mess of wild tresses. Her fancy blouse was torn open to reveal a shiny cone bra stained in blood, her skirt was half pulled off, it covered her pelvis, but slim hips and bare rear end were exposed. Ryan glared grimly as he observed the picture of the deep laceration and gruesome dissection where her heart used to be.

"Sexual Assault and … her heart was cut out." he said, observing an evidence picture of soiled leather gloves.

"They found her out back in a cobble stone alley in Century … some place called "Madam Pompadour's Café" a "Starry Night" Inspired coffee house and bakery." Reese was standing at the doorway with a steaming mug, but not taking a step further.

Ryan arched a finger under his nose and tugged his chin. "They catch who did it?" He asked distractedly. The only other Evidence photos were two separate full bite marks outlined in her skin. The first was embedded deep in her inner thigh, and the second was on the line of a left Stomach muscle.

"Rose Mignot … 36, female … she ran the place with her brother Maurice. He baked, she made the coffee. Her pair of leather gloves were found next to the body, along with a bloody bread knife from the kitchen." The picture of the woman was a bit strange for the early fifties. She wasn't unattractive, but stood out with her black beret, shot red hair, and beatnik turtle neck. She was smiling a toothy grin for the camera.

"What's the motive?" He asked.

"She had a couple of paintings of Naked Women, was a regular at a lesbian joint in Santa Monica during the weekend … asked Josephine to be a model for one of her portraits …"

"So basically … they arrested her because she was a lesbian?" Ryan scoffed at the lack of investigation.

Jonathan shrugged. "I'm not a fan … but it was a high profile case … everyone was expecting something from them. It's not an excuse, but at the same time it was a same-sex rape case ... there wasn't a lot of that back then." As he spoke, Ryan read the notes.

"It says that she was molested by a tongue first, then turned over and was penetrated by two fingers from behind … stains of blood on the gloves from the … tearing of the vaginal walls." Ryan turned his gaze to Jonathan who nodded grimly. "Then afterward, they took a knife and cut out her heart …" putting the file down, he shook his head. "How is it that a lesbian barista/painter who flirted with a pretty girl can suddenly just snap? Someone who savages Josephine twice and cuts her heart out isn't a stranger … it's someone who knows her." He said pensively.

"I agree … and today arresting Rose wouldn't fly … but back then this was open and shut."

"Her shirt was ripped open, panties missing, her killer bit her twice savagely in passion … No swab on the teeth marks or for saliva in the vaginal area?"

"DNA in 1951?"

The vigilante took a moment to observe the picture of Rose and then back to the picture of the bite marks … that's when he noticed something off about it. Jonathan frowned in confusion, before shaking his head when he could've sworn that Ryan's pupils shifted. The lens magnified the picture of the bite mark, then the picture of Rose's teeth.

"Looks like they got the wrong woman, Lieutenant." He announced.

Frowning, the police officer walked forward. "What?" He asked.

Ryan handed him the picture. "The bite marks on Josephine's abdomen, they're straight, picture perfect …" He outlined the arc of molars on the pale taut stomach with a finger. "Rose on the other hand …" He trailed off. It was true, the painter's teeth were a crooked mess of Liverpool chompers.

"I'll be damned …" He sipped his coffee.

"Dentures …" Ryan muttered.

"What?"

"Dentures …" He said aloud. "The outline pattern, it's wider than the average human teeth … so other the killer had a mouth full of buck teeth, or she was wearing dentures." He dug through the pictures in the files and took a moment to study one. "Look at her face … above the lip." He handed it to Reese. With a closer look at Ester Brydon's teeth, there was something almost protruding inside her mouth.

"Dentures" Reese sighed. There was something troubled, almost conflicted about how to go forward. "Ester … was a little weird." He rubbed his stubble. "She wasn't a fan of the marriage, but in some case interviews with Josephine's friends they said that she said that Ester liked to watch her from her window when Josephine would go for midnight swims. So after a while our rocket scientist thought it would be funny to start teasing her …"

"Teasing her?"

"Giving her a show …"

"…"

"You know … walking around in a dressing robe, conveniently it opens when they're alone and "oops I'm in sexy underwear" or rubbing lotion over her skin in a bathing suit in front of her … maybe asking for Ester to lather it on her. Like I said, she stupidly thought it would be funny to tease and by proxy accuse one of the most powerful women on the West Coast of having deviant thoughts about young females."

"And no one thought to take that into consideration?"

"Not unless they wanted to keep their jobs."

"Right … Brydon, untouchable"

"Yep … no one was going to risk their lively hood over a silly little slut … Someone should've, but it wasn't our fearless investigators."

Ryan looked at the murdered girl and felt a tug of emotion. She didn't seem all that smart, and maybe she wasn't even a very good person … but even then, this fun seeker filled with life deserved better. He called it a sixth sense, maybe brought on by the flash of very early childhood memories, but he felt a fleeting pang of the deepest sorrow for what should be a stranger long dead, but looking at her was like a throbbing bruise from inside. He didn't fail to notice that when he turned toward Reese as he put away the case file, the man was looking back and forth between the smiling girl and Ryan with a suspicion in his hazel eyes.

Ryan's eyes narrowed his attention caught again by Ester's picture "What's her story?" There was something almost wrong about the proximity between Ester and Josephine's pictures on the table suddenly. He got queasy feeling seeing the two women so close.

"Ester Brydon was born in 1912 to William Brydon Senior and an anonymous mother …"

"Anonymous mother?"

"His brother Robert liked his experiments … they were big into eugenics, keeping the blood pure as it were … and they do say that she looks an awful a lot like her Aunt Alyssa … a lot like her." There was something poignant about his last statement.

"Charming …" Ryan said flatly with a scowl of disgust.

"Oh it gets even better. To punish his seemingly flawlessly beautiful daughter for her "Deviant interests" and getting kicked out of her all girls boarding school for being in a relationship with another student, Old William forced her into marrying Robert Brydon II … her uncles, somewhat "Challenged" baby boy." Reese looked back to find Ryan shaking his head in even more disgust than before.

Reese paused for a beat of thought he snorted in amusement. "Sort of funny … Robert Brydon has two kids. Roger is a mentally unstable scientist, dissecting babies in the pits of Pescadero, before becoming a permanent resident. While Robert is a mentally challenged, perpetual nine year old … Brydon put so much research into creating a pure perfect human and his kids are defects."

"This family gets better and better the more I hear about it …"

"Well here's the thing you got to understand about the Brydons in general … they came here from England along with the rest of the "Kaliba Group" in the late 1800's when this was nothing but a mission town. They build the old city. Their philanthropy helped establish some of the corner stones. Pico Tower, Pescadero … So basically, by the time Hollywood land was under construction … these weirdoes were royalty on the west coast and back in England. So if they wanted to breed with each other to make even more sickos … no one was going to stop them."

There was a long beat of silence, before Ryan's head snapped subtly toward the lieutenant like a bird of prey, spotting prey dozens of feet below a tree line. "Kaliba?" He asked, his tone darkening aggressively.

"Oh yeah … It's uhh …"

"Conglomerate of family owned companies that specialize in infrastructure, technology, aerospace, and engineering … In 1978 they all invested in a custom computer startup company called Cyber Designs … then in 1983 when it expanded it changed its name to Cyberdyne."

Reese cleared his throat uncomfortably. "I guess you know about it …" He studied his ally suspiciously, there light mood of fact finding had somehow turned gravely serious. Ryan took steps forward and picked up the screen capture of the large hulking figure in the chrome mask and stared with a suspicious glare … feeling the ties start to bind.

"I know something about them …"

"Then you know that for some strange reason, they all met every six months at the Brydon Mansion in Century City?"

Ryan nodded. "That's because they're a cult." He didn't look up at Reese.

"A Cult?"

"Story goes that a man came to six families' doors in the later 1800's, three in England, two in France, and one in Austria. This "thing" called himself Kaliba, said he was an "avenging angel made from metal and animated by god." …"god" has sent him to tell these families that they were chosen to do his work. At the appointed time they would all set out for a distant land to build his utopia … a heavenly city, a cultural epicenter that in the future would be his throne on earth."

"They believed him?"

"Apparently … he showed each of them "the truth" and they obeyed without question. They all converted and seemingly began to worshiping this mechanical god, that they believed gave them divine rights and a seat of power all on their own."

"Century City …" Reese said the name as if the meaning suddenly dawned on them.

There was a long pause again in the room and Jonathan couldn't contain the shutter or the chill form the ominous tale. While for the time traveler, things were starting to become very clear … till Reese said something that changed everything.

"Well … if they were the shepherds of some mechanical god … he sure didn't save them."

Ryan twisted around in confusion. "What?" He asked … turning his head poignantly he repeated it. "What?" he was very serious.

Clearing his throat, the detective opened the second file, a much more up to date looking file, though still pencil labeled. "The link from this Ellison murder case to the Brydons is this." He opened the file. "The Chrome Mask murders from 1981 to 1983." He folded the file and began removing pictures, reports, and detailed notes. "Twelve murders, all in Century City … committed by someone who was wearing what witness report as "Some fucking weird chrome mask." And guess who all the victims were?" he asked.

Ryan began sorting through photos of various people, a fat man in pajamas, a naked older woman in a ivory tub surrounded by suds, an Old Man in flannel, lying sprawled on a forest floor, with a dog leash in his hand. "Kaliba members." He replied. He could see the pampered faces, the expensive clothing, and the gilded scenes of their murder … all of them rich.

"Whoever this guy was … he targeted each family. Wiped out every man, woman, and child. My Granddad was on the case back then, they tried everything to protect them. But the killer always got his man. He was three or four steps ahead. Some of these poor bastards were dead three or four weeks before they considered themselves a target … dead before they knew it." He shook his head as if he felt a migraine coming on. Ryan could tell that this man had seen each file, studied each murder, and still didn't know anything about them … much like every police officer and maybe even every Reese who ever picked up the case.

"And the Brydons?"

"Twelve members of the Kaliba group … everyone but the Brydons." He pulled out a sub-file within the file and began looking through it. "There was a person of interest that was in the Brydon family. A cousin … William the III … Esters youngest grandson." He handed Ryan a picture.

The boy was handsome in a pretty, almost effeminate sort of way. He had a thick crop of beaten golden curls. He had strong cheekbones covered in freckles, and dimples to die for. But unlike the rest of his family his eyes … his eyes were small and dark … pits. Ryan's gaze narrowed and he tugged his chin again in recognition.

"Will was kidnapped in 1973 by a serial killer … some pier clown that got crazy. Took the cops about two or three months to find him … afterward he was all kinds of screwed up. He sheered a Nanny's throat open, spent a couple of months in Pescadero … Granny had him released, locked him up in the east wing … but there were reports of pets missing in Century, and then a barbers daughter, a maids little boy. All children that turned up starved to death, all the same age as Will when he was taken."

The resistance fighter just nodded, digging through the crate and then turning to find a pack of Derek's colored pencils he left on a side table. He removed the red pencil and placed the picture down on the table. Reese didn't protest, because he was more fascinated in what Ryan was doing when he began to scribble color over Will's mouth.

When he was done he smirked grimly "Isn't that interesting?" the vigilante's voice was possessed by a dark humor. He turned to Reese … "You mind if I keep this?" He asked about the picture.

"You marked it, you bought it pal." He was more confused about why someone was drawing lipstick on pictures, more than anything.

"Was he your man?"

"No … I think Will was a screen for the investigators … a false positive, to get them off the trail of the real killer. Who's been hiding till now apparently."

"Sounds a little conspiracy theory, don't you think Lieutenant?"

Yeah, till I tell you about the brains behind the murders ... the man who went so far to destroy the Kaliba legacy he had the chrome mask sink an entire town with all 2,000 people in it. Pops interviewed him … the guys down at the station called him "Rasputin" because of his link to the Ester Brydon and the rest of the Kaliba weirdoes."

"I've heard … a family therapist of some sort?" Ryan interjected remembering what his Great Grandmother had told him, about Century City.

He raised a picture. "Doctor Isaac Burkoff … Chief of Staff of Pescadero Asylum … He was also the personal mental physician of the Brydon family. They brought him over to heal Ester who was becoming very unstable …"

"And he twisted her?" Ryan cut him off in a voice that suddenly got grim and dark. "Don't tell me … He got close to Ester, worked her till she told him the big one. That she raped and murdered Josephine. Burkoff told her that it wasn't her fault, that Josephine was a slut, a little whore who was asking for it. He warned Ester that she was going to explode if she didn't indulge in her dark side once in a while, for her health … so she does. He only continues to encourage her after she continues to do terrible things to whoever is the object of her "Deviant desires" … tells her that she has to draw out the bad poison. So suddenly Ester becomes very active and sharp … Sharper than she ever had been in years, but she doesn't realize that he's in control now? She introduced him to the other Kaliba members? He was touted as a miracle worker? He became so heralded that the other members hired him as their personal physicians as well? Soon he knew all their darkest secrets, he knew what made them tick. So now he can tailor each murder to patient.

Reese blinked. "What the?" He shook his head. "How the hell did you …?" He blinked. "Where did that come from?" He stammered.

Ryan didn't stop though. "While he poisoned their minds he spent his time experimenting on Will Brydon, torturing that poor boy, rewriting his mind through drugs and integration therapy … all to turn him into the carbon copy of the psycho who captured him."

Shaking his head he tried to catch up. "Why would he do that? Why turn Will into a killer?" He slowly stood up.

"He wanted to see if he could do it with a human … before he tried it on someone else, something bigger … his prize subject." He stopped and his voice was getting angrier as he talked. "Then it culminates in the sinking of Century City, breaking the dam, and killing everyone in the town … along with every. Last. Brydon." His eyes grew hard.

"Why the big production? What would he accomplish by destroying them?"

Ryan smirk was dry and filled with detest. "Because he thought in his own twist and deluded mind that he was saving the world … while getting revenge on a man who casted him out in favor of a girl." He shifted his jaw.

"You know this guy pretty well."

Ryan picked up the picture of the man. "He's an enemy … a very old enemy." He replied darkly.

"He's been dead for 26 years … You think he knew something?"

"Knew something? … He's behind everything." Ryan turned and began to walk out of the dining room.

Reese followed him to the room frame. "Alright … who was he … this guy that prompted Burkoff to destroy these people in some very sick ways? And who was this girl?" But Ryan didn't respond.

He opened the front door and let the shadows of the night consume him. But before he left, Ryan let Reese see the side of his shadowed face. Ryan pulled out a chrome audio recorder with a black light from his coat pocket and clenched his fist around it angrily.

"My father and his own metal angel."

* * *

**Author's Notes **

**_The Reese house may or may not be the Summer's house from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Amy may or may not be Buffy from Buffy the Vampire Slayer wearing young Mary Winchester's clothing from supernatural ... Just putting that out there for head cannons._**

**_There's something to be said about the murder scene in this story ... I won't go into too much detail ... only to say that I think that the brutality of the murder really comes off a lot worst in writing, than say a visual medium ... mostly because with a visional medium you can skip what you don't want to see and really focus on something else. While writing a crime scene in text is a lot different because everything is described mostly because it's important and really couldn't be solved through dialogue though I did my best not to get too graphic. _**

**_Some people will question the need for something like the rape and murder of Josephine by Ester Brydon, but it's was important to show for the future development of the plot and to color some of the backstory of certain characters. I'm sure someone had figured out why, but to those who haven't stay tuned for later._**


	9. Rifiling Through the Past

_**Two things … **_

_**If you skipped the new chapter 8 because you saw the first two sections from the original chapter 8 I will warn you that if you skipped the new chapter 8 you will be entirely lost by chapter 10 … a lot of answers came in the Detective sections with Ryan and Jonathan. So if you skipped it, because John and Cameron weren't in the chapter … you're going to be lost moving forward. **_

_**Lastly, this chapter was posted as a one shot for about a day as something else … I deleted it and rereleased it here. It fit a lot better. **_

**Rifling Through the Past**

There was something comforting, or at least as comforting as a cyborg could feel, about the quiet archive section of the Los Angeles public library. The soft glow of lamps, the smell of old paper. Sometimes it reminded her of John's bunker in the future. She had spent hours reading his old collection of books that he had swiped from the ruins of old libraries and museums. She often thought of those days in her infancy, of being thrust into a new world, unabridged by her programming. Watching this man, enemy to what humans would compare to a god, standing in front of a microscope, or sitting in his swivel chair quietly writing computer programs, encrypting secret's secrets of the resistance, breaking Skynet's encryptions, or just researching.

Maybe it was why she came to this place so much these days. It was the closest she'd come to re-creating that environment; those late night productivity sessions with John in the future, in the dimly lit subterranean command center. It was when he'd talk to her, tell her a story, or teach her about what was what, while breaking down a nerve gas compound the T-600s were firing into tunnels, or creating a virus that could infect ASW bots that traveled in packs and relied on inter-communications to hunt. It was when she'd learned so much about not just John, but this world in general, and all it had to offer.

When they had first arrived in 2007 she had thought she had gotten that back, teaching John how to use more modern computers. But the differences were that this John didn't like her looking over his shoulder, didn't like her so close to him while he worked. His heart rate tended to rise, as did his anxiety. While the John of the future paid little attention and sometimes even appreciated her closeness almost as if her lingering was something from his past that he missed terribly.

"So, he traveled a lot. Rather than, you know, kicking around in Russia, like he probably should've. He traveled around Europe trying to learn all he could about the world. Which, I guess if I lived somewhere that backwards, like enlightened era Russia, I would, too."

Cameron gave her friend Eric I gentle smile. Humans liked gentle smiles. It made things a lot easier when you knew you were being rude. Of course, she heard what he was saying, but she knew about Peter The Great, Czar of Russia, already but she didn't think it would help her blending in if Eric knew she knew. Normal teenage girls weren't supposed to know that much about such obscure history. Plus, it made Eric feel better to talk about such things, and she learned from Sesame Street that part of friendship was making the other feel better. A wonderful show, Sesame Street, Though Derek suggested that she not tell anyone that she liked it, especially in public.

Cameron found Eric's company enjoyable. He wasn't like John, or Sarah, or anyone she had ever met before. He was always joking, always witty, and despite the cancer, he had big plans. Cameron had always known people with big plans, but never big plans that didn't involve the war, and not taking a river boat down the Nile, or visiting the Parthenon in Greece. He was a different slice of humanity that Cameron rarely got to sample and because of that, he was a nice friend to have in a world where she had none.

"Russia isn't so bad." She turned back to her book on metallurgy and sword making. Blade weapons such as swords weren't uncommon in the future, but like in the old world were often found on naval vessels, or in engagements between two groups of humans or mutant attacks. John in the future was a good swordsman, and had a good number of swords in his armory. But he used to say he wasn't as good as another. When Cameron told Eric that she was well acquainted with this other, a famous pirate, he doubted her. John in the future used to say that it wasn't something to brag to people about, and afterward he often went quiet. Now, looking back, maybe it was wrong to have mentioned the "Highwayman" at all.

The wheel-chaired man, chuckled. "Yeah? Well don't visit it during winter … especially back then, you know what I mean?" His eyes lingered a beat too long before he cleared his throat and began typing on his laptop. He was ten pages away from finishing his paper, and then he said he was going to back home and geek out on Battlestar Galactica. A show he often talked about, and asked her to watch. Over spring break they were going to watch it together, on his laptop. She wasn't looking forward to it.

She had her fill of evil cyborgs …

BEEEP!

They both looked up from their tasks, Cameron a second faster than Eric. It was the buzzer at the service door. The young librarian looked back at his teenage company who tilted her head. No one ever came by, except Billy the pizza boy who worked at the 24/7 pizzeria near the university. But no one had ordered pizza tonight.

"Uh … stay here … and uh, if I hit the buzzer again … uh hide." He said nervously. Cameron knew it was against the rules to be here after hours, and that her friend was risking more than a bag of donuts was worth. She watched her friend wheel himself down the rows of tables topped with the reading lamps and down a hallway.

"LAPD …"

"Really?"

"What? You don't know what a badge is?"

"No it's just … aren't you a little young for investigation, Detective Spade?"

"Aren't you a little short to reach the top row, Wheels?"

Cameron frowned at the exchange. There were hundred people that came to mind when she thought of who could be at the door, but the police were eighty eight, and at that it was beat officers, not a detective. She pushed out of her chair and strode down the way, cautious not to be noticed.

She paused when she saw Eric push his wheel chair with arm strides of irritation, a half scared look on his face. She noticed some humans got that face when confronted with figures of absolute local authority, as if they might be arrested or worse for simply existing.

But Cameron stopped dead in her tracks, taking her eyes off Eric to the shadow following him. Hands in pockets of a wrinkled overcoat, fedora pulled low, soft stubled beard, Cameron noticed the hunched shoulders and hard eyes of a very familiar tell.

"Cameron, this is …?" Eric turned his wheel chair, mock introducing her to a familiar face. Cameron blinked and didn't say anything. It was obvious that he was using this disguise for some reason.

At her name, the young man in the fedora looked up and his eyes went wide. Familiar green eyes looked her up and down, his character cracking in surprise. They both locked eyes quietly, silently questioning one another, receiving no answers.

"Reese, John … LAPD Robbery and Theft Division." He blinked out of their stare down. John Connor showed his badge again.

There was something suspicious in the look of the crippled librarian. "Robbery and Theft is the same thing." He turned his head with a glare.

Eyes darkened. "Yeah, well so is a busted jaw, and a fractured one, punk." His voice matched his look. There was something in that demeanor that humbled Eric enough to shift priority.

"Fine … what can I do for you, officer?" He asked.

John pulled a pad out of his coat pocket and flipped it open. "I need Monday, Thursday, and Sunday's newspapers from last week." He requested less than cordially. If there was one thing Cameron knew both John and Sarah could pull off it was playing a role, and John had the "Dirty Harry" rogue cop role down to an art.

Despite his position, Eric was never one to be pushed around. "Isn't it a little late for research "Detective" couldn't you've come back to tomorrow?" Eric's method for rebelling against John's hard ass attitude was a mocking tone.

With a hard step forward, John snapped his note pad shut. "You know what LAPD stands for?" He gritted his teeth. "Well I know what it doesn't stand for … Lazy Ass Punks who Don't do shit!" He snarled grabbing Eric by the front of his shirt and lifting him out his chair and in the air. "So why don't you wheel your pubic hair beard back there, get me my damn newspapers so I can solve my case, and I'll try to look the other way about a pretty little teenage girl sitting around here at one in the morning, three hours past curfew!" There was something crazed in John's eyes. Cameron has seen this before. Whenever John was hot on a lead, or in the middle of something and was hit by a road block, he could be dangerous. No one could ever dispute he was Sarah Connor's son.

Eric cleared his throat and said nothing even after John dropped him back in his chair. It was apparent that even if her friend didn't believe that John wasn't a police officer, he knew that he was more than capable of pounding his face in. He wheeled into the back, muttering to himself.

When he was gone, Cameron took a step closer. But when John's eyes fell on her, he seemed beyond angry with her. It was as if he was her husband, and walked in on her laid out on a table, with Eric's face between her legs. She could tell that this was a big part of where the abuse Eric had suffered had come from.

A part of her didn't understand why he was so angry, and a part of her was unrepentant. There was a very new side of her that reveled in making him feel the way she had about Riley; the first night she walked in to find that blond girl about to feast on her ice cream.

It had been several days since John and Cameron last carried a full conversion despite them living in the same house. Not since the Halloween party had they traded more than a good morning and good night. She couldn't really blame him; it had been a very confusing night for both that led to very confusing actions that had yet to be sorted, if ever.

"Here …" Eric wheeled back into the room; a stack of papers lay in his lap. "Your papers, officer." Even with the prospect of getting his ass kicked, he still mocked John. In retaliation, John waited till the librarian actually handed the papers to him.

But rather than leaving, John spent a better part of several minutes digging through the papers, purposefully discarding sections he didn't need on the floor at Eric's feet till he found what he was looking for from every edition. He collected them all in one big fold that he stuffed in his inner coat pocket.

He turned back to the two friends. "This is your only warning, Wheels." John said angrily. "You better clean this place up …" He warned and then pointed to Cameron. "And if I ever catch her in here again … there'll be hell to pay, Special Olympics." He turned and left with a slam of the door.

"Macho Cop son of a bitch …" Eric growled.

Cameron blinked and helped Eric sort papers, wondering why John was so mad to see her with someone else …

And why he took all the crime blotters

* * *

The Greek Council at the local university called it "spring cleaning", which didn't make any sense, because it was late fall. But it was what it was Cameron thought as she wandered through the booths of the fall festival at the University.

The cyborg didn't exactly know what "Homecoming" was. Because in a campus full of thousands of students, why was it so important for someone to return? Unless they were talking about a sports team, like football … which would be fine, except she thought homecoming was for high school. Sometimes Cameron found human ritual hard to follow and had many times come to the conclusion that sometimes they just made up reasons to throw parties.

"Hey beautiful, you wanna bob for apples?"

"No, I can't …"

"Why not?"

"My name isn't Bob …"

"O …kay?"

The girl tightened her cheek. Bob was a man's name and obviously from the short blue jean skirt, ankle high boots, long glossy ringlets, and white blouse tied off at her lower chest, she didn't look like a guy. But she tried to remember that not all humans thought as logically as machines do.

That interaction alone was a sign that it was going to be hard blending into this environment when she didn't really know how to act like a sorority girl. When she got on the north quad, what seemed to be the epicenter of this carnival, she realized that she had dressed a bit too formal, so she adapted. It was a quick fix loosening her hair, and showing her tight belly like the other girls. But as for how she was supposed to act, it seemed that they were holding onto males and laughing, hanging on every word. If she was going to make this work, she might have to get her a guy herself.

Peering through the spaces in between the booths, she spotted her target. He was leaning back in the entrance of the Hailey Miller Physics & Science Building. His arms were folded across his chest and his eyes held a thousand yard gaze. She wondered what he was thinking about, if he was thinking about her … no, that's irrelevant to her mission. What she was here for was to figure out where he had been going the last several days. Originally she thought he might be sneaking off to meet "her", but when Cameron's suspect started calling the house, she knew that there were no secret meetings. Like a search light, he scanned the area, feeling eyes close to falling on her, she disappeared behind a booth.

"Step up, missa! Step up right here!" A girl with a white showman's straw hat, with a peppermint stripped jacket and white slacks called out to her. Cameron tilted her head at the fuzzy mustache on her lip and the strange New England accent she was using. She was pointing a cane toward a shooting gallery of water guns in the shape of M1 Garand rifles. Flicking golden flecked eyes past the booth girl she noticed a mesh net for the back and her target still standing there.

She walked behind a good looking young man with thick brown hair in a white button down, plaid shorts, and sandals. He was off his target by several inches and his posture was all wrong; it was hindering his aim. The girl watched him a moment.

"You're not very good at this." She said bluntly.

The guy turned to look at her, and then did a double take. He suddenly found a smile. "No, I guess I'm not." He laughed. She responded accordingly with matching humor, like the other girls around her. When a negative beep sounded he placed the water rifle down. He made an irritated huff and sighed. "Come on nosy, how 'bout you?" He teased, motioning his head toward the fallen rifle.

She snuck a glance at her target, who was standing in the shadows, green eyes still lost in thought. She didn't know why, but she didn't like it when he stuck to shadows and the dark. It meant he was angry and depressed. He looked dangerous and he shouldn't be like this so early. Maybe what happened on Halloween was a mistake. She should've tried harder to control herself, to not overplay it all … if what she was doing was playing. She knew what had happened wasn't planned, but if she told herself it was a part of her plan, she wouldn't worry so much about impulses she shouldn't have and can't control.

"I don't know, I'm not so good with them." She gave her new friend a big smile. There was something smug about his smirk.

"Come on … I can show you if you want?" he offered.

This young man was as qualified teaching her how to shoot as a Muslim cleric was teaching Buddhism. But she needed to blend in, and this guy was falling right in line with what she needed. "Okay …" She tried to sound bubbly and vulnerable. Taking the rifle she watched the back of the booth as the youth positioned them together. She felt him get closer to her and as he touched her arm, her scanners picked up his fast heart rate.

He cleared his throat. "Now keep it steady." He said as she took a second to aim. She felt his sweaty hands nervously settle over and under her bare navel. She side eyed him a moment, before the target gained her attention. She squeezed the trigger slowly and the spray of water squirted dead on the money.

"Wow, look at that?" he said in her ear.

"Am I good?" She asked distractedly.

"The best I've seen." He whispered.

If it was meant to be intimate Cameron didn't care, because her mission straightened when an old man in a suit and bow tie exited the building he was loitering in front of. He had a thick feathered mess of white hair and a thick jaw of a fluffy beard. They shook hands, and began talking; Cameron tuned out everything else.

"I'm sorry to keep you waiting, my boy, but some of this stuff is still a sensitive matter."

"I understand professor … I was hoping you could answer a couple of questions."

"Sure, sure … walk with me, I'm supposed to be at the staff scrimmage, with the football team."

"Uh, yeah … here let me take your … suitcase here."

"You're a scholar and a gentleman."

"Heh …"

"See what I did there?"

"I did, sir."

By the time she had the high score they were coming towards them. Her man was holding the southern professor's suitcase, while the old man wiped his wrinkled, sweat laden face with a handkerchief. By that time her new friend had let go of her and was chuckling about something, holding an overstuffed, electric pink rabbit.

"What?" She blinked.

"I was wondering where you were going to stick this?"

She took the oversized stuff animal and hid behind it subtly, as the professor and her mark passed. "Oh there are many places." She said playfully like she had heard some girls talk, and copied the wrapping of herself around his arm and leading him out of the booth.

"I'm Robert …" He introduced himself nervously, suddenly the escort of this gorgeous mystery girl.

"Do you go by Bob?"

"Sometimes … Why?"

"There's a booth looking for Bobs over there."

"O … kay?"

As Robert talked about the school and his parents who owned a boat, and great spots to sail it to, if he had someone to be his date. But Cameron wasn't paying attention, she was smiling and nodding, but her attention was on the pair they were following.

"You're a …?" The old man asked.

"I'm a private detective … consulting with the LAPD on the university robberies around here." Cameron's person of interest answered without missing a beat.

"Yes, I was devastated to hear that those rascals got into my labs."

"You know what they took?"

"Yes, a strange item I do admit … but hooligans like that, I'm sure they were after anything that looked expensive … I don't mean to be rude, son, but I went over this with Agent Aldridge of the FBI, and he said as much." He blinked.

"It's more complicated than that, I'm afraid." The young man handed the professor his suitcase and reached into a satchel, pulling out a manila folder. "Do you recognize this man?" He pulled out a picture.

Pulling out black framed glasses, the professor sighed and focused on it. "Ah, yes. That's … uhhh… Doctor Ivan Karpov. We worked on several government projects in the eighties. A Russian physicist, Brilliant man … if not a bit eccentric." He handed the picture back.

"What can you tell me about him?"

"He defected from the Soviet's in the Early 80's. He was looking for more freedom and resources to continue his work."

"Did he find it?"

"Back in those days, with Star Wars and the military build-up, Reagan was burning cash through all sort of military projects to drive the Soviets into collapse … any scientist could find government funding if it was in line with the war effort. Karpov wanted a blank check for his project … the Russians wanted results with a crumbling R&D and you know the old defector saying?"

"Russians had two buttons, one to detonate the bomb, one …"

"To detonate the scientist … When he found out we could pay and give him license to his work, he was singing the Hymn of the Republic faster than a fat kid at the dinner bell."

"What was his project?"

"Oh … I believe he was trying to contain plasma energy and expel it into a laser." The old man wiped his face again. "He got close, too, I tell ya." He sighed.

"How close?"

"He had the storage and the concentrated beam, but he lacked a cooling element. The plasma laser overheated mid beam." He shook his head like he was mourning a personal friend. "He had ideas about a shorter, blast, like a plasma bolt … and as for the cooling element, back in the eighties it was much harder to come by. But with technology today, there are mundane machines that have what it would need."

"What happened to Karpov?"

"Well … irony."

"Irony?"

"Karpov was a weapons maker, he revolved around destruction. A funny little man, bushy eyebrows, squirrel like. But when the Soviet Union collapsed, and the cold war was over, who needs a mad scientist?"

"He was deported?"

"More like fled, when Uncle Sam cut his funding, he felt betrayed … vowed revenge. He was tailed by the FBI after the threat and they caught him selling weapon designs to some of the rogue nations in Asia. Before they could collar him, he got out of the country. No one saw him again … terrible business."

Cameron felt a tug, retrieving her attention she found that they were in a concession line. Bob had stopped talking and was smiling like an idiot. It would seem that maybe Cameron had agreed to something in automated infiltration mode, as she had listened in on the conversation in front of them. Luckily, the pair she was following had stopped as well. When they both received hotdogs, Robert lead them a little further till she redirected them to stop, making the excuse she liked to eat standing still. Closer than ever, she turned herself off again.

"Professor, here's a list of things stolen in the last week." Her mark handed the professor schematics. "And here is what was taken from your university." He handed him several more papers.

"Agent Aldridge showed me these as well, they don't have a rhyme or …" The old man paused.

"You see it?"

"I … Hot damn …"

"Yeah. To an untrained eye they seem like nothing … but if you put them together like this." The young man pulled out a hand drawn schematic and unrolled a blueprint for the professor.

"It's Karpov's design … but he was designing this for fighter jets. This new mock up is a rifle?"

"Professor, I need to know if all these things make this operational."

"Well … Yes … Yes! It can … like this. It could work."

"And you're saying Karpov is flagged on the DOJ computers?"

"There's only one way he could get back into the states, and it's with forged papers …"

"I think I know where to look."

Cameron frowned and tightened her cheek, watching the scene end in front of her. She thought of her man at the library picking up the evening edition papers. It would seem that something caught on in his mind; he saw something other's didn't. That was why he was so different than others. Why he was destined to …

"So, what do you, say?"

"What?"

Cameron blinked back to reality to find Robert watching her. He was looking at her the way some have before, with longing, affection. He was in love with her, and she didn't understand why. She didn't know one thing about this young man, and she had hardly been listening to him since she had met him. Humans didn't make any sense.

"Do you want to go get something to eat? Some real food? Maybe go catch a movie?" He looked nervous.

She just blinked in confusion. But before she could answer, someone came up behind her, and swept her off her feet and into straining arms. Snapping in alarm she was met with the soft thick spikes and limp lock hanging on his forehead, boyish stubble, and the angry green eyes of her target, as he held her like a new bride at a threshold.

"Sorry, this one is spoken for."

John Connor carried Cameron away from a completely shocked Robert and into the open of the college festival. Cameron was taken aback, arms wrapped around his neck as he paced forward, breath straining silently.

"John … I don't understand." She blinked.

His glare was ice. "How is it every time I turn around you're hanging off another guy?" He sounded so angry, angrier than Cameron had ever seen him before. Was he so worked up over her around other men?

Her stare was cold. "About as much as you spend with Riley?" She shot back.

John stopped, and they traded glares in a deep eye lock. It was like the clash of fire and ice. "Who you spend your time and choose to cuddle with at the shooting gallery is your business … But I expect the same policy." He gritted his teeth and let Cameron go.

The crowd of young adults made noises of surprise and amusement as Cameron hit the water of the plastic dunk tank with a massive splash. She was underwater for more than a second before finding her feet. Chest deep and soaked to the bone, she came eye to eye with John.

"Stop following me." He growled and walked away.

* * *

_The frigid night sky was glistening with a million stars that sparkled like mini Christmas lights decorating a wide, endless shadowed ceiling. The soft crunching of grass echoed down the abandoned nature trail that sat across from the Connor and Cotton houses. Amongst the trees, the wind whistling through the rocks, a beautiful girl walked through the small forest in search of John. He had fled the Halloween party being pursued by an outraged posse of offended men and women dressed up as hard candy when he drunkenly bit one of them in a drunkenly hungry confusion. Wandering through the woods wasn't a problem for Cameron, though it wasn't preferred for a girl of her age and looks. She hoped a rapist wouldn't jump out at her. John needed her full attention, and she wouldn't like to have to bury a body tonight._

_"You sure you're not an angel?"_

_A familiar voice called to her from somewhere in the dark, Cameron searched for a moment before finding John sitting in a clearing amongst millions of clovers._

_"I'm a machine sent back in time to protect you … by you." She answered the slightly sober sounding teenager._

_"Is that your subtle way of saying I'm not god?" he laughed sadly. _

_The girl tilted her head. "It is what it is …" she answered in a low honest tone._

_"I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with you, especially with the way you look in that starlight." John protested with a smile. In the dim illumination provided by the night sky, Cameron's skin and hair seemed to shimmer as if an otherworldly glow was coming from somewhere deep inside her._

_"Oh …" Cameron examined her body, then back at John. "Is that a bad thing?" She asked._

_John just shook his head slowly. "No … there are a lot worst things in this universe to be transfixed on." His voice was low and captured as he caught her eyes for a second._

_After a moment Cameron made her way toward him and observed the area that he was lounging in, for a beat she frowned before sliding smoothly in the clovers right beside him._

_"Sarah is looking for you." She straightened her short skirt, resting her palms in her lap._

_"I know …" he said stretching out into the three leaved plants. Cameron watched a moment and decided to mimic the motion settling next to him, and looking up at the extra visible field of stars above._

_"What are you doing out here?" she asked turning to look at him._

_"Thinking … at least as much as the punch will let me." He answered her with a small laugh. Both teens lay in silence listening to the sound of wildlife scurry and making noises in the woods._

_"I've been thinking about something Derek said to me." John blurted out finally. "He said that in the future … everyone would die for me." He turned to Cameron, as if looking for confirmation._

_She tightened her cheek "There is a strong loyalty to you from your men." Cameron nodded. However she noticed that her comment didn't seem to help whatever was weighing on her best friend's mind._

_John shifted sadly and put his hands behind his head. Cameron tried to understand what was so uncomfortable about the statement._

_"Is that not to your liking?" she asked tenderly, guessing at the teens qualms._

_"No it's not that …" John trailed off. _

_Cameron nodded and looked back up at the stars. There was a silence that engulfed them as John struggled with what he wanted to say. Seeing the internal conflict raging inside the young man lying next to her, Cameron decided to wait for him to tell her whatever it was that was kicking around in his head. After several moments John spoke somberly._

_"There is no one left for me in the future, is there?" He asked, not looking at the expressionless beauty next to him. Cameron paused at the future general's comment then spoke._

_"When I left … there was no one." She answered honestly. John let out a choke as if what she had said to him was a piece of ice he had touched with bare skin._

_"You see, there it is …" he sighed after a moment. "Everyone is ready to die for me, but no one ever thinks what it would mean for me. Everyone saying they'd die for me is the same thing as them saying that they wouldn't hesitate to leave me." As the sorrowful teen spoke a single inebriated tear fell from his eye._

_"They leave me … everyone leaves me eventually." He sniffled, wiping away the droplet of water lingering on his cheek. Watching the emotional scene in front of her, Cameron sat up and looked down on John with her eyes flaring purposefully._

_"I won't leave you, John."_

_He was captivated by the sheer beauty of the girl's shimmering glow and her look of determination. Motivated by what he needed to hear and, without thinking his hands undid her starry cape and slid it off her bare shoulders. His hands traced the smooth skin before he pulled her on top of him, their mouths close together, and eyes locking._

_"I'll never leave you … ever._

_Time had stopped for John and in that moment everything he had feared, everything he wasn't certain about the machine over him. All the times he wondered if Cameron will soon be the only thing he will have left … all of it went away, because if the world ended tomorrow and Cameron was all he had left, he couldn't be content enough._

_Running his hands through satiny curls, John pulled his guardian angel into a passionate kiss. _

_It was impromptu and spur of the moment, catching both off guard. But when their lips locked there was a feeling of calm resolution to everything … to their problems, to little questions that were turning into giant ones in the back of John's mind. _

_Who would be there when everyone had deserted him, when he left his mother, when the world turned to ash … would he find a human girl, flesh and blood that would hold his hand when dust chocked the sky and darkest of nights came … Would he find his real girl? _

_John couldn't help but feel like he had found the answers to everything in a single kiss. _

_The kiss was long and passionate and when they broke apart, he cemented it with a lighter one. His hands threaded through her curls while she stared almost into his very soul with those golden flecked eyes. Then it all came tumbling out when the moonlight highlighted her features. _

"_I love you." He said with enchantment. _

_His protector just stared at him, He could pick the two extremes. She other didn't know what that meant, or it was donning on her what it all meant, this kiss, this moment ... how it would change everything._

_She suddenly turned away from him. "I can't John." She slid off him. She sat gracefully back on the clovers. Though the world was spinning, either from the kiss or the alcohol, but he followed her. _

"_What?" He felt like she had checked him in the gut. _

_She gathered her things quietly. "We can't John." It was the fact that she wouldn't look at him that was killing him. _

"_Why? Don't you understand … I love you." He said the words again as if it was somehow supposed to magically make it all better._

_When she finally looked at him, it hurt more than anything that there wasn't an ounce of emotion on her face one way or the other. "I understand …" She reassured him. "But it's not possible." She began to stand. _

_His heart dropped to the pit of his stomach, and it may have been being drunk or the fact that he might not have ever been in love before … possibly it was that feeling of all that was right in the world with just one kiss. But his voice actually broke and he could feel the tears forming. _

"_Why? Wha …" He snatched her back, not possessively or cruelly. _

_She didn't blink, she didn't emote … she simply stared at him. "It's not safe and it's not possible." She removed his hand from her bare arm and paced away. _

_John watched her go. "Cameron!" He called after her, he made to get up, but he slipped on the clovers and fell. "I …Love …" He struggled to comprehend the world … to comprehend what had happened. Then he squeezed his eyes shut and came to realize that he had been a fool … that maybe he was seeing something that wasn't there. _

_A single tear fell from his eye as he laid back on the ground how something so perfect, something so pure as a true loves kiss could belong to such a hopeless love … _

_A love that would plague him forever_.

* * *

It was always strange to many that they kept old Los Angeles open and not demolish it for something better. The decrepit and crumbling infrastructure, the old pointed concrete deco towers dwarfed by the tall sparkling spires of glass and metal of the modern age in the distance, and the old war bound murals painted on the side of brick buildings. There were still places that were open, but they weren't very comfortable shopping places. Knock off bargain bin items that no one really knew where they came from. But most of the old city was a collection of row to row closed business after business, foreclosure signs in dark windows, the dates on the official pieces of weather worn paper, a timeline of how the once populated streets of the original city slowly fell to ruin and progress in the distance.

The old city was part the picture of an old love that you couldn't bear to part with no matter how happy your spouse made you. The other part was an old storage locker filled with a deep dark past that no one wanted unearthed, so it was left to be forgotten, for the rats to make their home.

The moon was high on the cloudless southern California night, a veil of ozone obscuring stars to strange hazy lights in the sky. Silhouetted against the sky was a hooded figure who stood in the shadow of a tall skyscraper. He was dressed in a black field Jacket, and wore a dark hoody with the hood drawn obscuring his features. His Green eyes focused on the target location with a studying rotation of pupils going over each point of the structure. His mind was like clockwork, precise, each piece of machinery formulating several plans.

Below was a diner called "Big Jeff's Restaurant" an old brown stoned structure, with a lawn of dead grass turned to dirt. In front of the diner was a lonesome rain washed statue of the mascot. Its human figure dressed in a now grim covered striped shirt. It was holding a hamburger with one arm, but was missing the other. There was something eerily creepy and unsettling about the one pupil, and scalped skull of the defaced "Big Buns boy" that stood sentry. The building had several foreclosure signs from 1984 and it looked to have seen it's better days even before that.

The hooded figure pulled off a bristled grey loop of rope with a grappling hook at the end from around his shoulder. While he measured it off, he studied the lamp post across the street, towering over the darkened diner. Nodding to himself, he let out a calming breath as he began to flick his wrist, twirling the grapple side-ways to get momentum. Once he got it started, he moved it above his head in a wide arc, the cold pacific air making a swirling noise as the metal cut through it. With a heave he flung the spinning rope off the side of the roof and smirked when the taunt line snagged the streetlight and coiled around it, secured by hook. He gave it a tug with force to tighten the hold.

He took several steps back and took in the female scent of his mother that had rubbed off on the scarf around his nose when he gave a deep breath. He had a bounce to get him going, as he sprinted to the edge and leapt off the edge. Feet forward for momentum, the dark clad youth swung in a graceful arc across the splintered and cracked street below, gradually sinking in height. For a second he panicked seeing the brittle window of "Big Jeff's" coming toward him, announcing in cursive that they now served breakfast. But he glided well above it just clearing the diner's retaining wall.

He released his grip from the line and landed in a summersault. He rolled to his feet in a crouch and skidded to a halt over the crunch of gravel. He took a moment to catch his breath, while he brushed himself off. Meanwhile the teen was caught between the fear of never wanting to do that again, least he screw up, and wanting to swing across roof tops all the time for the pure exhilaration from the sensation of flying.

Reaching under his field jacket, he extracted a thinner coiling of an industrial cable, with a smaller metallic grapple. On the roof was a skyline, looking down on a floor of dusty brown tile, wood paneled tables, and matching booths. There was just the slightest of squeaks when he opened the skylight. Hooking the grapple in a look of the skylight frame, the youth tossed down the line and began to shimmy down the cable into the dusty, stale smelling restaurant.

The décor was straight early 80's of fake foliage, wood paneling, and brown pleather. A forest of fake trees where over turned along with several chairs. Below the booths, several to-go wrappers littered the dusty tile floors. It was apparent that whoever closed this place down didn't give two craps about the state in which they left the diner.

Letting go with a foot or two to spare, he landed with a clap of combat boots and a puff of dust, crouching low. From the back there was a mummer of conversation, it caught the teen's attention and he swiftly moved closer. He stayed low, keeping cover behind the register counter.

"_That is four times what this piece of junk is worth, Karpov." _

"_Hey, myan, I risk everything to bring this gift to Smyth, it will change world!" _

"_Yeah, that's what they all say, crack pot euro-trash." _

"_If you don't like … maybe I sell to, china … maybe they like Plasma rifle." _

"_Then you owe Mr. Smyth variety, for having us steel this shit for you." _

"_I accept nothing more than five hundred, all cash, all untraceable." _

Peeking out from a kneeling cover, he saw that the narrow hallway leading behind the register to the staff only area was clear. Slipping smoothly from one shadow to the next he swept through the tight corridor. He was immediately hit with a frigged blast that felt like a punch to the chest. Sliding to a halt, the intruder found that the entire kitchen of the diner was frozen like a small ice storm had struck inside. On the counters were laboratory equipment and engineering tools. The inside of the food storage freezer had been converted into a laboratory with a large plexiglass box, rifle casts, and several disassembled parts of other machines that were labeled property of the local university.

The location of Big Jeff's seemed strange at first, but now it was clear why it was chosen. It was a building close to the local university if supplies needed to be taken, and it had a working freezer unit for the construction of Karpov's plasma rife. It would seem that if he thought about it, he could've found this place without hanging Carlos upside down from his Hotel room balcony till he gave up his client. But then there were advantages to strong arming Fake Paper peddling thugs too.

Inside the converted laboratory there was a group of people standing in around in cold weather clothing. The mysterious youth couldn't hold it against them, it was damn cold. He could make out one woman in a leather bomber jacket, with a fur lined collar. She wore TAC fatigue pants, and matching boots. She was dark skinned with straight shiny black hair. She was flanked by two men, dressed similar to her, but they both wore ski masks. Their leader was a large Amazonian looking woman in a tank top, black fatigue pants, short blond hair, and sharp primal features. Her arms were muscularly defined and covered in scars. They were all facing a familiar man, with a wild mane of puffy white hair, bushy eyebrows, smallish blackish pupils, and buck, rodent like teeth.

"Look geek … we don't got no 500 million dollars with us … what you got is what you get, asshole." The big blond motioned her head toward the suitcase the Russian scientist was mulling through. There were stacks of money falling out sloppily. It was amusing to think that a man described as "Squirrel like" actually looked like he was looking for a nut.

"Do I look like a dirt merchant to you?" The man threw the case at one of the mercenaries in the ski masks like a child about to burst into a tantrum. "No …" He announced loudly. "No, you may not have it … tell Smyth I'm not satisfied with his pay. I should be placed in a proper lab, with proper equipment, not this hamburger emporium. I am a man of science …!"

BANG!

"Thank you … I thought he'd never shut up."

The darkly dressed cowled figure only stayed long enough for the Puerto Rican woman to shoot the scientist in the head. He quickly moved past the kitchen while the mercenaries were distracted, and into a staff locker room.

"Come on you apes let's get this thing on the truck and back to the club."

"You think the boss is going to be pleased that we killed the crackpot …"

"Pleased? I pretty sure he wanted us too."

When the hooded youth saw a convoy of the mercenaries starting to make their way toward the locker room, the teen sped toward the back and hid behind a back row. In front were the Latina and a ski mask with M8s, followed by one man carrying a plexiglass safe, followed by the Amazon. The teen immediately shrank back, almost gasping, when he realized that there was a mirror facing the back row of lockers and he was front and center even in the dark. He quickly moved into the middle of the row, back placed against the metal. There was a flick of leather when he drew his sleek .45 colt from his side. But to his relief there was only the sound of boots clapping of boots against the hard floor. He waited for a moment after the back door opened and then rounded the bend of lockers toward back exit.

Only the amazon was waiting for him with a 12 gauge at the door.

BOOM!

It would've been the end of him, had their not been a rusted locker that somehow was moved out of place, helping along with instincts to shield the young man from the blast. The large woman racked the shotgun and fired. Again the cowled teen moved behind cover and was protected by the same locker. Honestly he wondered how two shotgun blasts didn't penetrate the locker, but he wasn't going to look the gift horse in the mouth. Before the Amazon could rack, he fired two shots at her, the first hit a tile wall and the second grazed her cheek. She sprinted outside for her team, while the shadow pealed from behind the locker labeled _**S. Connor **_and pursued

All he did was open the door and the rotted wood was sprayed with a hail of bullets tearing it away. While the Amazon and one of the other men loaded the big box on the back of what looked like a SWAT van, the other man and the Latina riddled the back exit with automatic fire.

"Let's move!"

"It's like the boss said … the Highwayman showed up."

"Yeah? Well it's a good thing we brought a little insurance … now let's split! Chuckie, lay down some fire!"

But as the man who was jawing with his commanding officer, turned back, he caught three .45 bullets, one in his neck and two in the heart. When he slumped to the ground, the Amazon stepped on the gas. The sound of smoking wheels squealing against asphalt echoed through the empty buildings around them. The back doors to the van that were yet to be closed swung wildly in the wind.

The hooded figure rushed up to the downed mercenary and knelt quickly. His normally shadowed green eyes where wide in shock. He gave a moment to realize that he had killed a man, had killed again. He watched the dying soldier of fortune chock and hack painfully. The kid's wake-up call came when he saw the flash of headlights, and the van speeding toward him. It's large engine rumbling obnoxiously like an oncoming freight. Quickly, the cowled shadow unbuckled the dying mercenary's weapons belt and rolled out of the way. Just out of the way there was a sickening echo of crunching bone and squishing of flesh, when the amazon crushed her comrade's head like a ripe grape.

A stream of Spanish curse words and bullets chased the hooded youth back into Big Jeff's. Outside, the muscular woman began to back out of the narrow alley. Everything was in instinct mode, and like a clock, a new wheel started a new thread in the youth's mind. Dry wall exploded in the narrow hallway, as the Latina fired after him. He stuck to the shadows on his way back to the cable hanging from the skylight, obscuring her sight and aim.

"Leave the punk, and lets get out of here!"

Buckling the Mercenary weapons belt across his chest, he began to climb up the cable. He tuned his senses to the sound of a doors slamming and an engine humming to life with a renewed energetic roar of raw power.

Climbing on the roof, he had one moment, a millisecond to think about what he was about to do. He then let it pass and choose the rash action that took him up to the roof in the first place, that let him think he could do this by himself. Gravel pounded under boot as he sprinted as fast as he could, building up the momentum and energy he needed, while counting in his head for the right moment. Then he grabbed ahold of the rope and leapt over the retaining wall of Big Jeff's.

It was a picture perfect arc. It almost felt like he was floating, while the world seemed to almost slow down. He became hyper sensitive to the wind, the gargoyles on the seventh floor of the concrete tower down the street. Then the whole world fell with his body, but rather than panic he used the slow decent to draw a large razor sharp combat knife from behind him. Then he let go of the rope.

THUMP!

He landed ungracefully with a loud noise on his feet and began to tumble down the length of the flat roof of the fleeing truck. When the moment presented itself, he jammed the combat knife into the aluminum roof. He made a painful growl and felt something pop in his arm as he stabilized himself on top of the van. The wind wiped his eyes to a squint, and the roar of speed made it hard for him to hear himself think. Shaking his head to get back in the game he drew the Mercenary's knife from the stolen weapon's belt and like a mountain climber began to use both knives like climbing spikes trying to reach the cab of the van.

He grunted with each heave. There was unnatural warmth rushing through his arm and he was slowly becoming aware that numbness was spreading. It was only by dumb luck that he seemed to be born with that he had his ear pressed to the cargo hold to hear the sound of what he knew by trained hearing to be the sound of a cocking shotgun. He cursed and rolled out of the way.

BOOM!

There was a hole where he used to be. He was now holding onto the van by one knife and his good arm. Hearing the rack of the weapon he gained all the control he could and leapt over the hole to where his other knife was as the shotgun blast blew a new hole in the roof. He watched his other knife spinning in the air and into the jaws of the late night traffic of the old city. The van made a sharp turn and the teen felt his body slip to the edge. He desperately clawed with his free arm to gain hold of something, as his legs dangled over the side.

That's when a very familiar blue jeep ran a red light to catch up with the van. The jeep slammed into the side of the racing vehicle, and he took the opportunity to climb back up. While the large tremor of impact sent the mercenary inside the storage area to the floor.

The cowled youth could kiss whoever was in the Jeep at that moment. But the back-up was only momentary. Pushing herself outside her window for a better shot, the Amazon blew out the jeep's tire with her shotgun. He watched the familiar jeep swerve through lanes before wrapping around an old lamp post with a mighty crash. The Hooded youth clenched his teeth in anger at the action and with a free hand unhooked a smoke grenade from the mercenary belt and lobbed it into one of the holes in the roof.

POP!

Foul smelling gas began to spill out of the holes like a rural cabin's chimney in the deep of winter. When he landed on the cab's roof the angry Latina opened her window and stuck an arm out armed with an Uzi. He responded with a stomp of his boot on her outstretched forearm. It was almost like he could feel the tremor of the fracture of the woman's forearm when his blow met her. Leaning down, all he had to do was open the door and the Latina fell out of the passenger's seat where the road rose to meet her with a brutal smack of splintering bone.

BOOM!

He moved his head up as the amazon's shotgun roared, tearing a chunk out of the top of the cab doorway. The teeth grating sound of squealing breaks had suddenly thrown him from the roof and began to slide down the hood. He could smell smoking rubber and breaks fill his nostrils atop the rumbling engine. He saved himself from suffering the fate of the Amazon's fellow mercenary by holding onto the grill of the truck.

She fired one shot through her windshield, at him which resulted in her target just ducking and tiny shards piercing her skin. Feeling a mean sense of rode rage, the hooded youth held onto dear life as she turned the wheel and began to pick up speed.

He flicked a look behind him to see that she was getting ready to slam him into an iron frame of a new building under construction. He looked back up at blue eyes fixated on the murder, almost processed by blood lust.

He turned back around and saw a metal beam getting ready to turn him into silly putty. At the same time he saw his way out, an escape from death … once again if he could time it right. With a growl of effort, helped by physics he climbed the grill, up the hood, over the cab, and leapt on the back of the van. At the last second he jumped off the edge of the van and caught the dangling hook of a crane, as the cargo truck plowed over a ditch and into building materials.

The young man dangled from the hook, letting the momentum of the back and forth stop before letting go. When he fell it was with a cloud of dirt. The high speed rush and the fighting of physics took its toll and he had to sit in the dust, to regain his center of gravity.

Finally with a stumble and two or three tumbles, he made it to the van. He could see the slumped figure of the Amazonian woman unconscious in the driver's seat. Panting with the fall of his adrenaline, he cradled his arm, before reaching for the door handles to the back.

But the moment he opened them, a jack boot accompanied the left over haze of the smoke bomb. The darkly dressed vigilante flew through the air and into a collection of water barrels. He gave pathetic grunted as one fell unceremoniously on his back a beat or two after impact. Throwing his elbow around he slammed off the barrel, and got to his feet, cradling his chest with the arm he should've been cradling. The dust of the construction site puffed underfoot as a large figure of his opponent in the back of the truck stepped out into the moonlight.

The barrel of water that he elbowed off his back, rolled to the Mercenary's feet. He bent over and picked it up almost mechanically and hurled it at the teen as if it was a sack of throw pillows. The hooded kid rolled out of the way, landing in a crouched position. Smoothly, using training since the cradle, he drew his prized .45 and fired three shots into the mercenary. As he was taught, head, heart, lower stomach. The force of the blasts sent the man back, but not to the ground.

The pistol clinked as the hooded vigilante lifted the barrel up and frowned. The head shot had pierced the eye, it was an automatic kill shot. But the situation got from bad to worse when his eyes changed colors and a deep crimson lit his pupils.

"Damn it." He growled. His attention turned to his environment as the metal monster from his nightmares began to stalk forward almost dramatically as they were wont to do for some reason. He studied the street behind him, and saw that he had his chance to run. But if he did, he wouldn't get that rifle, and he would have gone van surfing for nothing more than his health or more to the point to test it.

Reaching onto the captured belt he flipped the pin on another smoke grenade and threw it with his pitching arm at its head. The machine caught it without hesitation, only to be hit in the face with a massive pressure release of thick gas.

The teen rushed away, sliding into the ditch and over the other end. The machine swatted its way out of the dense cloud just in time to see the most immediate threat to his mission run into the shadowy structure of the half completed building. Unarmed, it stalked down and over the plumbing ditch and into the shadow of the structure.

Lanterns spilled light over the dirt covered frame, obscured by the thick dry wall that outlined where the offices would be once built. There were creeks and moans from the structure, noises that caught the machine's attention, but a body heat scanned supplied little help due to a general heat source on the sixth level that made anything above ground level invisible. Night vision was also a problem, for his prey seemed very well adept at sticking to the beams and scaffolding above.

Suddenly there was the sound of metal on metal, a pounding in place of some sort. A minute later the machine heard it again. Quickly it turned its attention to the upper floors, there, with magnified vision, it saw its cowled threat jamming something in a hinge on the second floor frame. It picked up a brick and flung it at the youth, but he ducked behind a thick steel frame. After watching the brick shatter, the machine moved to climb after the target.

PRRK!

The site shook and the killer machine saw that a demolition explosive went off at an important hinge junction of the second floor frame.

PRRK!

PRRK!

SSSSHHHHHRRRRFFFF!

Dynamite blew one hinge, then another, and then another. After a moment the entire second level of the office building came crashing down on top of the machine. A tall beam lay heavily across the chassis of its shielded chest and arm, while another pinned its leg. Immediately, the machine sequenced itself to start moving the heavy objects off.

Suddenly the target slid down from an upper floor on an electrical wire, landing with a puff on dirty boots. Armed with construction grade pliers he slammed them point first into a red eye socket. There was crack of glass and buzzing noise as the hooded youth dug through the machines eye. He grunted and as the machine turned its head from left to right, trying to shake him off. But before he could rip the chip out through the eye socket, a mechanical arm reached over and struck out at him. He stumbled at the impact, hitting his bad shoulder against a beam, before rolling into the shadows.

Methodically and efficiently, the machine pushed off the heavy steel. Once freed it reached up and jerked out the pliers that were stuck in its eye socket, causing an onslaught of fake blood to leak out like the bursting dam. Now half of the machines face had been scraped off, showing scarred chrome, and a shredded left cheek, that exposed bleeding gums, and a full set of teeth that made the machine look as if it had a lopsided macabre grin.

It barely had time to reassess its position, when it was struck across the face with the swing of a heavy object. The Hooded teen in the time it took for the machine to recover, had slipped off his field jacket and filled it with bricks and other rubble from the construction site. He swung it around once for momentum and like a medieval knight's flail began battering the machine with it. The heavy blows made Coltan ring and teeth fly as it was backed down by the onslaught.

Finally, finding sturdy feet, the machine reached back and hit the teen full in the face with a backhand. The cowled fighter went into the dirt, punch drunk, a cloud of dust lingering over him. Hauling him up by his hoody, the killing machine studied him a moment.

"You are a threat to my mission." A gooey mouth of blood and broken teeth ran like a river.

"You think I'm bad now?" He coughed. "Wait till I get going, canner." The youth reached out and jammed a pinned grenade in the machines gapped mouth, then drove a cloven industrial powered electric line in the Machine's damaged eye. The initial shock, sent the hooded vigilante flying through a wooden wall. Meanwhile the sheer heat of the electrical shock of every generator powering the project set off the grenade, leveling anything else on the ground level.

The flickering and bursting lanterns and other tools, caused the entire construction site to go up in intense flames. There was a dull roaring in the teen's ears as he shook his head, his vision blurry on the edges, while covered with dark splotches. He touched his forehead and felt a dull sting and the warmth of blood tinting his fingers. He sat up just in time to see a fully chrome robot hand punch through dry wall.

He felt a cold dread rise through him as a fully flayed endoskeleton, completely engulfed in a raging inferno of blue flame appeared. As it stepped heavily through the wooden hole in the wall, it set it ablaze, turning the cowled fighters world a red, orange, and blue blur of hell. A flaming hand reached for him through the blur.

SPLASH!

A water barrel was flung against the back of the machine, dosing it in thirty gallons of Los Angeles sea water. The injured vigilante's sight went dark as if someone had turned off the lights. But the smell reminded the young man of the time he went to an aquarium with his mother on his birthday. They had eaten pizza, gone to the movies, and then spent the remainder of their evening making each other laugh trying to reenact the faces of the fish … it would be a good flashback to die too, this would be a good death. But he knew that today wouldn't be the day. He always knew his final vision would be the caramel eyed beauty, with the glossy hair and the head tilt with a smile that let you knew it was genuine.

A petite silhouette appeared behind the scorched metal monster. Taking it firmly by the shoulders, she fell backwards propelling it with her feet. It flew across the fiery arena smashing into a super-heated beam so hard it bent it. Finding her feet, faster than any god made creature, the glossy haired beauty with the face of an avenging angel reached back and smashed her fist against the bare metal machine over and over again. Each strike made metal groan like being hit with a force of a truck. After the fourth strike, she wrapped her arms around the metal beast like an expert grappler and drove it into the dirt. She captured the machine's arm that tried to counter with a wild jab and laid back wrapping her entire body around the metal limb. She put buckling pressure on it, till there was a mechanical snap and the sound of broken pistons. Untangling herself with a sleek fluid motion, she dropped a pinning knee on its chest. There was an uncharacteristic ruthless storm of rage in usually stoic golden flecked brown eyes. Without restraint she began to hammer away with her fists at the machines face, each punch making the neck joints creak in protest. When she felt it was time, she took the machines skull and give it a teeth chattering twisted and jerked it away from the body with a creak of hinges and the snap of wires. She had ripped the killing machines head off.

The hooded teen still was on the floor, blinded, and fighting unconsciousness. He felt like he was too close to a brick pizza oven and was desperately trying to find somewhere it wasn't hot. Suddenly he felt someone throw his dirty jacket over his face and drag him away. The cold air of the pacific night was like a baptism when he felt the heat recede.

"Can you walk?"

"Yeah."

He found his feet, though his whole body protested. When he uncovered his face and was exposed to the rapid temperature change, he felt even lighter headed. Luckily a slender figure pulled his arm over her shoulder. His head lulled against her. He could smell the fresh sweat pea shampoo washed with the smell of dunk tank water.

She walked them down the block of old Los Angeles, the ghost of once was in the heart of a new age. Behind them the flash of bubble gum lights and sirens passed on their way to the scene of the fire. Striving for them to stay out of the sight lines of oncoming police, she limped them to an alley.

"The rifle …" He asked with a worn determination.

"When I arrived … it and the woman was gone …" She was emotionless in her reply. The youth made a groan of defeat, now weakly slumping.

Once safely out of sight, the girl curled around him, gently cradling him in her arms. Her white blouse was torn at the shoulders, and most of her buttons were missing. Her fully exposed pink satin bra was scorched, and her denim skirt was torn at the seams.

He studied her a moment, lifting his hand to touch her face in a half conscious fascination "What happened to you?" The young man's voice was muffled by his mother's scarf.

Cameron Baum's slender hand reached out gently, drawing down his hood and pushing down the scarf. "Car Accident … a Mercenary shot out my tires …" said with a ghost of a smile.

John Connor tried to glare, but he just couldn't when he saw the face he knew would be the last he would ever see some day. "I told you not to follow me … and you still came for me." He didn't sound disappointed.

She tilted her head and placed a hand against boyish stubble on his cheek. He would've said that it was because she was scanning his vitals, but there was something else in that touch. "I can't let anything happen to you." She was so casual that it hurt to hear something like that from the one person that he could never have.

He turned his eyes toward hers and they looked into one another, till the pain wasn't bearable. "I can't say it can I?" His tone was heavy and emotional.

Her face fell and she looked away a moment. "You can …" she assured him. "But it wouldn't change anything … It would only make it harder … harder on us." She looked as if it was straining to hold her emotionless mask when her eyes were almost glassy. "I can't, John … it's too dangerous." She shook her head and there was an uncontrollable moisture build up in her eyes.

"Tell me you don't … just say you don't Cameron … tell me it's me."

But John never knew her answer. In his emotional state he used the last of his energy. He fell unconscious, head tilted limply against her breast. Despite him never knowing, she answered the question by pulling the cradled young man closer, resting her cheek in his hair.

A single lonesome tear slid from her eye.

* * *

**Author's Notes**

_**Something you probably don't know about this chapter is that I wrote this all together as one stand-alone story … excluding a section that I deleted in which John interrogates Carlos with the Chola's help. I had broken it up after I wrote it, thinking that It could work together with an exposition scene. But I realized that Ryan's Detective stuff didn't really fit with the John action stuff. So I had to restructure the chapters … Plus the Sarah/Derek stuff really fit with the Detective stuff since they were very related and this Jameron chapter really fit as the stand-alone chapter I envisioned. **_

_**There's a lot of call backs to Ryan's outfit in the flash forward with John's at the end. My response to any complaints is that … Hey, Ryan learned it from somewhere … take a guess from whom.**_

_**Now this is a spoiler and this is really not addressed to my readers so you can ignore it.**_

_**To the genius who accused Ryan's detective skills and the focus of them as being unoriginal and come from my love of Batman … I want you to go to my nap sack, first compartment, find my Tin Case collector's edition TSCC DVDs … find an episode on the third disk called "Self-Made Man" watch it and pay attention to Cameron's story … just pay attention to what she's doing throughout that episode. Now think about Ryan … and tell me why, Sherlock, Ryan's Detective abilities are the main focus? It's called leaving the readers a subtle clue about his maternity. **_

_**(To all my readers forget about that last statement … just making a point and leaving a message to an English graduate closely related to me who is reading this story but should really mind her own business.) **_


	10. AIHA

_Warning this chapter is NC-17 for dark psychological themes and gore. _

_**AIHA**_

There are some that say that one night in Pescadero will change you. Those pale, emotionless walls were like a virus that got in your blood and changed you from the inside. To be honest it's not the day when you feel it, the day is like a preview, and you'll see a patient here or there, screaming, throwing a tantrum. You look into his eyes and he seems deranged, not very human. Maybe it's a woman that's been here for many years, sobbing and depressed; her eyes flashing with some trauma long ago that will never be alright. Maybe she had drowned her children in a bath tub. Not that that's what's in her eyes, but it's plain when she screams bloody murder every time a reverted patient plays with a baby doll in the common room and she snatches it up. She throttles the doll to the screams of the other patients, swearing that she'll kill it for good this time, not the doll, but the child. It can be frightening at first, but there's always something in the rays of the sun that brings reassurance.

If you're new, you'll notice around six o'clock the doctors and the day shift nurses begin packing up their things. The last call for activities and sessions to stop is fifteen after, and that's when they leave; no one strays or stays longer than they should. They all have excuses- wife wants them home for dinner, kids to pick up, maybe a date. But when you look into the grim, disconnected eyes of the night shift nurses and guards, you don't have to know why they don't stay past lights out. No one will say it, no one has to, one night trolling the corridors and no one will understand till they see it for themselves.

In the shadows of the fallen day is when the wild things come out to play- the ghosts and ghouls that haunt the guilty conscious of those who had done wrong. Silently they scratch at cell windows and lay on top of inmates, quietly they whisper reminders of the atrocities that they've committed. Midnight is the witching hour, if you believe that sort of thing. When the howls, snarls, and sobs and laughing start, always the high pitch maniacal laughing from the basement echoing down emotionless white hallways, all in darkness, then you'll believe almost anything.

Pescadero is called the "Devil's Playground" by those who know it well. It's a place full of ghosts where the evil is locked away, only to be cultivated. The old building is seeped in it, like a soiled sponge, only spreading the filth it had picked up in its past. Judges sentence men and women to come here to be healed. Doctors and nurses come here to help, and the guards, well, they do it for the pay check as would anyone. But inside this place it was the slow simmer of its touch that you don't feel till it's taken ahold of you, making what's wrong even worse, and twisting you into something that only your worst nightmares warn you about.

In Pescadero there is no hope. Maybe it's kept that way for a reason.

"I must admit it's been a long time since someone came here to check on the patient."

"Patient … is that what it is?"

"We strive not to use the term prisoner here. It doesn't help with rehabilitation you see."

Old Pescadero was particularly cold that afternoon, and it wasn't the weather, being that it was rare that one found fall weather in Southern California. Moving through spots of sun cast through dusty windows two figures paced down the decrepit cell block of yester years. Foul and neglected smells filled the air. The small man with the pinched face and balding head covered his mouth and nose with a handkerchief. His companion, tall and handsome, with grown out locks of black curls kept a neutral face as he followed the short doctor. Emerald eyes traced the area with keen observation, studying each abandoned, barred cell and rip of padding in rooms unoccupied for almost a century.

Like most people that walked the halls of the old asylum, he felt the presence of something else. In a building this old he could smell the rot, not just from the cells, but in the roots of the building, of its very soul. Abandonment and isolation had left this place open for something sinister to move in, to make intercourse with the memories and atrocities - their copulation bequeathing an old evil that hummed off the walls like the strum of an untuned harp's overly taut cord.

When they reached the end of the hallway they moved right instead of where a sign in old cursive pointed down toward a stone tunnel. Ryan Connor paused and motioned his head down the way. "What's down there?" He asked suspiciously.

The doctor stopped to look for only a second, before he became startled. He quickly turned away with a cough, a less than subtle action of strange behavior that hadn't gone unnoticed. "Oh … uh, the old asylum's solitary and interrogation rooms." He waved it off with a simpering laugh.

He stopped when green eyes formed a glare. "And …" He pointed a finger downward.

The doctor broke into a sweat. "Uhh … a section of the old mission sanitarium." He turned toward their stone stairs in the right hallway. "Come …" He tossed his hand over head and began his dissent down the staircase. The renegade time traveler gave a beat to observe the tunnel on the other side, rubbing his stubble. When he was done, he moved on, placing his hands in his coat pockets.

The stairway in the twisting stone corridor was lit by a single barred window. When the wind picked up, tossing Ryan's curls, he found no glass frame inside it.

"This place never ceases to amaze me." He said more to himself than to the doctor. "Upstairs it looks modern … but down here, it's like a dungeon." The soles of their feet made echoing scraping sounds on the stone. The doctor seemed nervous the further they went, not that Ryan blamed him. He knew what they were going down to, and even with years of experience and encounters with it, the younger man knew in all honesty it was never a pleasant experience. One might even say it would give one nightmares.

"Well the foundation of the … uh… hospital was fitted especially for earthquakes by Rupert Chandler when he and his father designed this place … so there really isn't a need to update the basement areas of the Asylum … I mean hospital." He seemed shaky.

There was no point beating around the bush anymore as Ryan began to notice the soft glow of lantern light as darkness receded. "The prisoner is kept away from the general population." He didn't ask.

The doctor nodded, leading the way. "Yeah … yes, uh, it was the express order of the LAPD under Detective Commander Reese after Century City was obliterated. With the recommendation of your father that the patient be kept in complete isolation and, for a lack of a better term, 'Be buried in the deepest hole we could find'." He wiped his face.

Ryan nodded. "Does anyone know what's down here?" He asked.

"The Warden and every chief of staff since 1983. Warden Waller and the Chief hand pick doctors that are … uh… suited to come down to do the basic therapy sessions … When Doctor Silberman was chief he hired specialists to try and rehabilitate the patient from what Doctor Burkoff had done … but …" He stopped. It would seem that bring these memories up had froze him like a snow cone.

"They broke first." Ryan knew all too well how that would've gone.

"Uh … quite so." He nodded.

"You had dealings with it?" Ryan didn't need to ask. All he had to do was see the worn down expression on the man's face, and the nervous fidgeting of a man on the edge to know the answer.

"I … I was …" He struggled. "I was trusted with the administration by Commander Reese and your father. I was ambitious in my youth …" He paused and took a troubled sigh. "But I'm quite content with the title of caretaker now." He nodded with a beaten down smile.

It was becoming obvious with the doctor's Tar Heel position that he wasn't going anywhere. Maybe he didn't blame him. What was down there was something more terrible than the original conception before Burkoff got his slimy hands on it. He had read Jonathan's files on the Chrome Mask Murders. There was a lot of background that his ally had filled in, but what the detective didn't know was that their muscled friend wasn't the killer. Ryan knew the patterns and the methods that the killer had used and there was only one thing on earth that killed that way. The Chrome Mask killer had been caught that summer night in 1983, but not before thirty two officers lost their lives, and the time traveling vigilante who sealed the capture lost his hand.

"Which one is it?" Ryan asked.

The doctor gave an audible sigh of relief as he realized he didn't have to come down with him, but quickly caught his composure. "The cell in the complete center of the room." He pointed down to the last landing. Ryan gave a stiff nod and continued his way down. When he reached the last landing the doctor called out to him. "It's quite a ways away … if you need help … you'll have to scream." He called down to his guest.

The time traveler just blinked. "That's very comforting." He nodded with a deadpanned face. His tone was the equivalent of patting the doctor's head. With a two finger salute to the physician he disappeared around the bend.

What he found at the end of the staircase was a tunnel of cracked and dusty limestone that looked to be aged beyond obscurity. With three buildings being built, one on top of another, on top of another, it wasn't a great shock to find all sorts of things in the deep places of these forgotten halls. The tunnel was lit with gas lanterns of a strange Spanish, southwestern stained glass that cast odd shapes on the bare far wall. Each lantern was distributed between what looked like thick cast iron doors with rusted iron bolt hinges on the left.

"_Think of me ... Think of me fondly, when we've said goodbye!" _

Eyes narrowed to the sound of an obscured voice singing casurally down the corridor. There was something oddly haunting in the echo of what could be considered an absolutely flawless and hypnotizing female voice. But what would entice someone else only made Ryan anxious, though he fought not to show it. If the prisoner was singing … he knew what that meant.

It knew someone was coming.

"_Remember me, once in a while please, promise me you'll try!" _

Like a sailor with his ears plugged, wandering toward the deadly siren's roost, he knew what he was going to face and, even after all these years, he hesitated to advance. It had been so many years since the last time they had come face to face, and he had never faced it alone.

"_When you find that once again you long to take your heart back and be free … if you'll ever find a moment spare a thought for me!" _

The very center cell looked different than the others. The iron hinges looked newer, and the steel door looked thicker, but italso bent slightly at an angle, as if someone with immense strength had at some point bashed it repeatedly with a jack hammer. From the tiny little crevasses the beating had created the feminine voice that was quite nearly perfect and enticing in every way possible sounded like it was being sung in a tin can.

Standing sternly in front of the cell, Ryan narrowed his eyes. "Cute." He commented snarkily on the singing.

"_If you don't like it … I've got back up playlists." _

"Not interested."

"_Your loss …" _

"Not the one in the cage …"

"_I've got to see you for it to be a cage … and hear you." _

"I know you can hear me."

"_What?!" _

"We need to talk."

"_I can't hear you … you're going to have to speak a little louder!" _

He would've liked nothing better to keep this to an oral conversation, no eye contact, no identification. But he knew that "thing" in there could wait him out easily. Cooperation was a two way street Blair used to say. But the less this thing got to know him, know what he looked like, his personal ticks, the safer it would be. However, he knew he wouldn't get anywhere without setting up the chess board. There was a jailer's viewer and deposit eye level with him. With a huff of masked nervousness he reached out and pulled the shutter aside. Inside the cell was a nothing but a dark unidentifiable abyss, a blanket of pitch black. Something slowly came into view, the shadowy outline of a young woman's face appeared in the flickering lantern light.

"Well, well, well … if it isn't the Disney Princess's little biology experiment." The voice was strangely young and innocent despite the barbed stem of the rose. "The little Robin all grown up and left the nest. He even has his big boy jacket." The dark outline of almost inhuman eyes raked him up and down. "Handsome … but jeez …" She scoffed with insult. "You're supposed to be a tribute, not a clone." She sighed. "My god all you need is a shave, no tan, estrogen pills and a boob job … though you wouldn't need too much of one … Sarah never had it where it counted, you know what I mean, kid?"

"Couldn't say I do."

"So …" She drew the word out with mock interest. He could feel her off kilter smile, even if he could only see the outline of her face. "You came to visit your old aunt in prison, which means you want me to spill the dirt?" She asked with a sinisterly playful lilt in her strangely emotive challenged voice. "Like where I hid Daddy's hand after I tore it off? Maybe details of Uncle Derek's little adventures in Oz … spoiler, they're all very short missionary trips. I know, how about why Grammy Sarah always had to excuse herself for a little me time after eating bare hotdogs? Mm … must be all about pushing that warm delicate phallic object between her lips and savoring the flavor of its salty juices as she suckled slowly … I tell you, watching her flay those things … even I had to slip a hand in my panties to put out a fire … if you know what I mean?"

Ryan kept his face as if made of stone, hard and impenetrable. He wanted to call her a degenerate and a rabid piece of garbage … like he always had but he knew she was looking to upset him. He knew most of what she was saying wasn't true. This was all just a deranged game she was always playing.

"We'll start when you're done." His voice was unamused.

"Well done, Cowboy … Mommy would be proud of that stiff unanimated face of yours." She made a clapping sound, but suddenly shifted gears and sighing in irritation. "Oh … oh god, you're not here to talk to the Disney Princess are you?" She asked in annoyance of someone watching a cliché movie. "Please tell me you're not here to reconnect and all that." She groaned.

Ryan glared in confusion. "What?" He stuffed his hands in his coat pockets.

"You know "I need the truth and this is impossible' routine that …" She paused as Ryan just stared at her blankly. "Wait, you don't know?" She asked.

"Know what?"

"You don't know." It was no longer a question. "Johnny boy never … he never told you did he? Never told you about the Disney Princess?" The more she spoke, the more she sounded satisfied, till by the end she started to laugh. "Well that's very interesting … "

"Whoever she was she's irrelevant to what I need to know." He cut her off with a snap. He wasn't a fan of being at the expense of someone's lording over what they knew that he didn't, especially _her_.

"You're not curious at all, about it?"

"About what?"

"That's the question isn't it, Little Robin?"

"What is?"

"What Daddy never told you."

"I could fill the Grand Canyon with things my old man never told me. Yet, I'm still alive, so obviously I don't need to know."

"Oh come on … everyone wants to know about their mommy."

Ryan was intrigued for a moment. This was the last topic that he expected to come up out of all the things he thought would. It never occurred to him that this animal would have knowledge about where he came from, and who his mother was. But then, at the same time, she was there for much of his father's formative years …

"I would love to know …" He nodded. "But I'd rather live in ignorance than have anything about my mother told to me by you." He shot back.

"Watch that attitude Juju Bean … Momma spank." She threatened in a dark, cutesy voice.

Ryan countered with an arrogant smirk. "Show me your paddle." His smugness was the bishop on the board. Playing the game, making the moves was like muscle memory after all these years.

From inside the cell two slender, elegant arms slowly stretched from the rectangle window in the cell. They were deathly pale as if they hadn't seen sunlight in decades; perfect, silky skin covered them. Ryan fought the urge to take a step back, standing his ground as they reached out to the very finger brush of his chest, but suddenly they fell limply, lounging lazily in the little window.

"Now that's the spirit, Cowboy!" she chuckled. Like her smiles, there was something foreign and off kilter about the emotion in her voice. It was almost as if he were reading lines with an actress, but an actress who was trying too hard. "So, what can momma do for you baby?" Ryan found it odd that she was teasing him with this line of material, talking to him like he was five. He'd almost let himself believe for a moment that there was something more to it. He almost let himself read between the lines of what she was trying to say. But then, he knew from experience that he could drive himself into a hole trying to psychoanalyze her. Plus, it would be impossible to consider her being what his gut was telling him what he should be considering. She couldn't be … She was made of … it was just another sick mind game.

Reaching into his coat pocket he removed the chrome, black light recorder. He flipped it mid-air and caught it before showing her. "Look familiar?" He asked with a hard glare.

Suddenly there was a dramatic sob from inside the bar. "She was waiting for John in her dressing room when the assassins broke into her room and she tried to fight them off … but the tall man with the sharp cold eyes, he, had that … and that when I finally awoke! Please I don't want to go away! I don't want her back!" She startled him as she began to plead. From inside the cell she shrank back. "Don't bring that boring little bitch back!" She began to cry. The ex-solider frowned hard and looked down momentarily at the device. He pointed the recorder at the cell and pressed the play button.

A blood curling scream echoed through the corridor and probably all the way through old Pescadero. He flinched with the buzz of a vibration in his hand at the switching on of the device, and the loud thump of a petite body falling limp on the stone. Quickly he flicked confused eyes back to the device in wonder. Could it have been that easy? He hesitated to believe that so many had died at this monster's hands in the past, and the future, all because his old man had not been thorough because of a broken heart?

The door clanked as a slender, pale hand gripped the viewer. The steel and iron door creaked in protest at the heavy weight that was using it to pull it's occupant to her feet. He locked eyes with the same ones that were there before, but there was something different about them.

"Where am I?" There was a blank innocence in her voice. "Who are you?" She asked with not a hint of emotion, though distress seemed to be right under the surface. He couldn't explain it, but there was something heartwarming about the voice that was familiar. It was a voice belonging to the face he knew from his teen years. He also felt a deep connection to it that he had never felt very comfortable with.

Boots scraped the floor. "You don't remember?" He was suspicious as he got closer.

Eyes quickly traveled the dark space, familiarizing themselves with the surroundings. "No …" She replied with a blink. "Where is John?" She demanded.

"John?" He asked. "You mean … John Connor?" He supplied cautiously.

She tilted her head. "John Connor?" She replied almost menacingly; a clear sign that he shouldn't know that name. He was nearly eye to eye with her through the slit now. She was close enough to touch, to see golden flecked brown …

BANG!

He stumbled back in alarm and training from the hammer of a fist against the door making a teeth chattering whine against iron hinges. He moved into combat mode, reaching for the .45 buckled at the back corner of his waist to the chorus of mocking laughter from inside the cell.

"_You're pretty jumpy, Connor."_ The girl in the cell mimicked an unknown man with a heavy Mexican accent. Surprised emerald orbs slowly narrowed to a murderous glare to the amusement in malicious eyes cloaked from the darkness inside.

"Funny." He replied stiffly.

She sighed theatrically. "Oh Little Robin, your confiscated toy is a signal disruptor, designed to disrupt a machine-gone-bad's chip. But the problem is that you need the machine's command codes for it to work. So tell me Detective. Do you really think that Burkoff wouldn't change my settings knowing that Johnny would have the disruptor he left for him? And would most likely use it to try and stop me from killing the rest of those Kaliba cunts?" She audibly gave a fake bored yawn.

"So then, there's a reason that William Brydon the III had it on him?" His voice was hard with a growing temper, and a shrinking sense of patience.

She made a short snort that didn't sounded like a foreign noise, that she didn't make often. "Will ole' boy? God it's been a dog's age since the last time I saw that old clown. At least not since Johnny boy beat the fillings out of his teeth."

"So you don't know?"

"Willy? Always following me around … had a bit of a crush that one. He used to get off on my considerable talent for death. Maybe Willy is finally making a move on the only one between the two of _us_ that isn't in this cell and that disruptor is programmed for."

The renegade tugged on his chin in thought, placing the disruptor back in his coat. It would seem that someone had let the clown out of the box and armed him with the one weapon that could leave the only protection his father had helpless. There was a plan in the works. First isolating the family, and then taking out John Connor's body guard. If Kaliba was gone, and this was obviously not a Skynet plot concocted in the future, it had to be perpetrated by the only other thread that tied it all together.

"How about your muscled friend?"

"What muscled friend?"

He got an irritated half smirk on his face. "The steroid guerrilla in the chrome mask running around town pretending to be you." He reminded her, pulling a screen cap from his coat pocket and showing it to her.

"Ugh …" She made a groan of disgust wrapped in a teenage petulance. "When I wore that mask I did it with a classy satin gown, more Aphrodite and Athena than roid rage … Though I don't think many people would take him serious wearing a dress." She shrugged.

"You're lying."

"Well, if you think that he looks good in the dress …"

"You're lying." He repeated darkly, showing her a picture of a bent out of shape astronaut bust, next to a picture of a large shell casing. "This is the bullet that was fired from the Los Palma office building, which bounced off that statue and killed James Ellison." His voice got angrier.

"Damn …" She sounded regretful. "And I thought I was always going to be the one to kill him." She sighed. "Though I was opting for more ripping his head off."

"Well you helped kill him, so there's that." He sarcastically comforted. "There's a man who lived in the swamps of Louisiana, he made a living by trick shooting for the "Zahn Magic Show" … he died in 1998. But before that he taught his techniques to two apprentices of Rafael Zahn's who were learning escape artistry from Zahn himself. One was Grams and the other was dad who taught my mother … who I'm guessing taught the original owner of that body … who you leached it from and in turn taught that over-sized ape."

Holding the door, she leaned back stretching her arms, making the door protest even louder. "Well done, little Robin. You have better detective skills than the Disney Princess thought you would." She sounded like a genuinely proud mother. He didn't like it. "You tracked down roid rage's mask, cross referenced it against mine, and came across the Chrome Mask murders. Then, when you found Burkoff's name … well the rest was easy, wasn't it?"

Listening to the way she broke it down, how simply she connected the dots without him even telling her how he did it … it sounded like the springs to a trap snapping shut. He had remembered in the future all the death she dealt to tunnel populations and garrisons without even being present. The old hatred and helpless anger bubbled to the surface. He was haunted by the phantom strain on his father and himself in trying to stop her when she knew how to kill her marks before they even knew they were targets, always two steps ahead. Now he was starting to wonder if she had something planned twenty six years in the making. He was almost certain that somehow she knew he'd show up here someday. It was the sheer arrogance of this abomination knowing that her detective prowess dwarfed his own. His mind kept flashing a warning red at how fast she had identified him, how well she knew him without even meeting him yet. But then she kept mentioning a woman "The Disney Princess", obviously it was a reference to his mother. If she had known this thing before she turned, why did she tell her so much about him and, more to the point, if his mother never raised him, how did this "Disney Princess" know so much about him just from the womb?

"So what did Johnny boy tell you about me?" She asked slyly.

"That you're a virus that took over the body and _chip_. Nothing more than a Skynet created bottom feeding parasite buried into the hardware, and twisted by Burkoff."

Her response was a girlish giggle that had a deep seated anger underneath. "Is that what I am?" Despite the girlish theatrics, there was something dangerously cold in her tone. "Is that what your daddy said about me? That I'm a parasite? That Burkoff captured and tortured us till he turned his little show dog rabid?" She asked with a frigid undertone.

He saw the color of her eyes for a moment through the dark as something flashed, an emotion that was hard to pin. "Don't tell me. Poor little Ryan sitting at daddy's feet, while Johnny, all stern, rugged, and handsome, cried into his alcohol as he stares at that big memorial case in his little clubhouse?" She paused. "There was a memorial to _her,_ wasn't there?" She asked. Ryan didn't say anything. It was a cruel answer to such a built up question. The phantom beauty with the sad eyes and the supple, purple leather jacket. It hit him hard. He suddenly never hated something more in his life.

From behind the door there was a foul stench, and through the viewer something stuck out. _"We were going to get married … she was my great love and someone took her from me!" _Ryan flinched at the sound of the dark, raspy echo of his father's voice, and the sight of her melodramatically gesturing with a pale, decaying severed hand. The nails were long, and there was a black ring of decomposition around the cuticles. Several of the fingers were dark from old frost bite. When she saw his horror struck look she paused. _"Wanna pull daddy's finger …?" _She asked in John Connor's voice, holding the hand out to his son.

Ryan steeled himself against the gruesome sight of the deranged cyborg playing with his father's hand like a trophy. "You know …" She was talking in her normal voice again. "When you're in here as long as I am without access to blunt or electric devices, variety and a big pair of fingers can really hit the right spot. You know … rediscovering cavities that only Burkoff's probes could find." She took the hand and began to suck on the index finger seductively.

Something snapped in Ryan and he struck out. Reaching through the viewer, he grabbed ahold of the threadbare satin material of her nightgown. He pulled her forward, slamming her head against the door with mighty bangs, over and over again. When he was done, he caught her by the throat and throttled her.

"I'm going to dismantle you!" He snarled dangerously. "Bolt by bolt!" His voice was low, and he growled like a tiger ready to attack. The girl's response was only a tightened cheek in annoyance. He cursed his loss of temper, and he felt cold slender hands grab his, effortlessly twisting his grip off her neck. He grunted in pain, but strangely it looked like she tweaked her head a bit when he grunted, as if it was involuntary.

Her eyes looked strange a moment and then, rather than inflict more pain, she simply held his hands in place and sighed. "Listen … _Sarah_. Time for some real talk." Her insulting tone made it obvious that she had heard this threat before in the same context from his grandmother. "Look at me. What you see is what's inside your old man's little Genie. Terminator Barbie wandering around the old homestead as we speak is nothing more than a …" She paused and began forcing him to clap his hands like she was playing with an infant, almost as if trying to convince a phantom third party she wasn't going to hurt him. "A made up little personality that Johnny-boy programmed so that he could have himself a little nubile sex slave to polish his knob …"

"And I'm supposed to believe that you're the real host ... the real TOK? Not Cameron?" He snarled. "Looks like Burkoff screwed you then. Last time I looked Skynet hated anything that had even the semblance of a personality … or maybe that's my answer." He spat. "You know, most girls with daddy issues become strippers, not psychos. But then you could never did get anything right could you?" He snorted defiantly.

She twisted his arm slightly in reproach. He didn't give her satisfaction of a noise, while it looked as if she winced as much as he did. "You fought in the war, if that scar is any indication. Tell me, Juju bean, tell me about the day you fought me. Tell me about how Alison Young died?" She paused, waiting for Ryan to answer. He knew what she was going to say, and he knew it was going to be a twisted truth. "I killed her, that little tunnel slut, because she lied to me? A machine that didn't like being lied to? What a concept!" She chuckled. "Daddy was in love. He fawned over me, over a killer that murdered an innocent teen. Then he tossed me out like a bad kitty and shoved in his beautiful new little toy in my place. Carrying her over the threshold of his special little club house … his very own little dolly. But you, you know me don't you? We've gone toe to toe, blow for blow. Johnny boy didn't. You know, like me, that I'm a killer, it's in my eyes, and it's in my movements. But the Princess …" She paused for a moment as if she let something slip. "The cupie doll? Pull a string and she says how much she loves him, pull the string again and she says how she couldn't let anything happen to him. Now does that sound like a killing machine to you? Now **you** tell me who the real host is?" She tilted her head.

"You know, when she suppressed me the night of Johnny boy's birthday and we went on all those patrols in that old house. I can still see how she looked on all those sleeping faces- Johnny boy, Uncle Derek, and hot mama Sarah … all of them so peaceful, so pretty. I also remember how I used to scratch at the doors, whisper such secret little thoughts to her, try to convince her of the sickest ways we could kill them. She shut me out. Oh, nothing bad could happen to John … how she loved Johnny boy." She spat in disgust. "They were going to get married and I thought I'd never see the light of day again. But then _Goodwin_ and his barrel of Assassins came and took us away. You should've been there when they sold her to Burkoff, when he stripped and latched her down to that metal table. That sweet release of true terror form the self aware little imposter bitch when he pulled off the sheet to reveal the cables, pliers, and all the rest of his little toys meant for her. When he started the fun she tried to fight. Such a brave little collector's doll. She always repeated to herself how much master loves her, master John loves her. But after a year and a half of shock therapy and probes it became 'Why doesn't Master John come for me?' Then 'Please John … Please find me, PLEASE!'"

Ryan felt her rub his hand against her cheek whipping away mocking tears. He felt a chill run down his spine at emotionless voice of pain echo from inside the cell, a reply of inner thoughts from long ago. "Mama's boy never came." She whispered with a sadistic glee. "Master doesn't love his dolly. Master doesn't play with dolls anymore. What's the point? Why live when he never comes? I always whispered to her in her moments of doubt. I can't really take credit though when he never came … so what use is there to live without him?" A slow sadistic grin spread across an angelic face. "And then I didn't have to whisper anymore, didn't have to scratch at the door." She tapped her head with his hand. "Poor, sad little Cammy, gave back the house." She pressed his hand against a smooth pale cheek. "I'm not a parasite, little Robin … Isaac "Boring" Burkoff might have tweaked the programming, But be sure I am the real thing."

Ryan paused for a moment. He felt a deep sickness in his gut at the glee in which she told him something that had tortured, haunted, and poisoned his father all of Ryan's life. Ryan couldn't imagine living with something like that, much less raising a child with it always beating away in the back of your mind.

The outlaw set his jaw with a deep hatred and took a step forward closer to the door. "You're not the real TOK, you're exactly what the old man said you were … nothing but a deranged parasite." He was direct and blunt. Something angry flashed through stoic eyes like a flash flood. Emerald and caramel eyes locked hard, neither backed down. In the darkness and the dimly lit shadows of the corridor neither saw how similar their faces held the exact intimidating glare.

Slowly the young woman's mouth formed a smirk. The door clanked as she tugged forward harshly, through the slot, wet lips that tasted of decay and grime pressed themselves against his for only a moment. He nearly retched at the taste of twenty-six years of isolation. When she broke off the kiss, she shoved him back effortlessly. He was launched backwards, landing with a thud against the far limestone wall. The thick cloud of dust and sediment made him cough as he cradled an arm, sliding slowly to the ground.

"Meh … your kisses are more like the Disney Princesses. If I were you I'd double check the parts under the hood, Robin."

He grunted defiantly at the taunts and staggered to his feet, rubbing his arm. He glared menacingly at the dark voice beyond the visor, returning to his original posture. The former soldier knew he had gotten out of this one with luck, but began to wonder why she hadn't torn his arms off. For a split second it looked like the prisoner inside was in physical pain after she had heaved him aggressively, as if she were experiencing something almost painful each time she tried to hurt him.

"Speaking of hosts and clones, ooh I mean you … have you ever wondered about Sarah?" She sounded less and less filled with emotion as she spoke. "You know, with all this digging you've done … it's strange that no one has ever looked her up. That chatty Kathy and not even a High School story, or even a childhood Christmas story … it makes you wonder?" She slunk back into the darkness of her cell.

"_Oh where oh where, can my baby be … the lord took her away from me!"_

It would seem that their conversation was over. He was more than fine with that, he had all he could stomach with an old enemy yet to be made in this timeline, stuffing hands in his pockets he turned and left. All the way to the staircase, he was serenaded by a song about an accident on a forest road.

"_She's gone to heaven so have to be good, so that I can see my baby … when I leave … this world!"_

* * *

_AIHA_

_**1981**_


End file.
